Just an EarthBound Misfit, I
by Kalee233
Summary: Modern Persuasion - Throughout their four years at MIT, Anne and Frederick were the best of friends, bound by their shared passion for aviation. This is a ride through pre-Persuasion, Pink Floyd and the post 9-11 economic fallout.
1. Chapter 1: Jetrosexual

_Author's Note and Disclaimer: The mission of this couplet of stories ("Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I" and "Can't Keep My Eyes from the Circling Sky") is to retell the story of "Persuasion" in a modern context, with modern values, in a respectful and faithful way. This couplet of stories also makes tribute to Pink Floyd's 1987 song "Learning to Fly" from the album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason", and hence the use of the song lyrics to form the story titles was a deliberate choice on my part, to pay homage to the song. "Persuasion" and its characters belong to Jane Austen, not me. In this story, I have also taken ample creative license when referring to actual names, places and events. The purpose of my depictions of real life institutions, places and events are to lend better context to the story, so factual accuracy may not be 100% (though I do strive for faithfulness in spirit)._

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><p><strong>Chapter 1 - Jetrosexual<strong>

_March 2009, Punta Gorda, Florida_

The mercury was climbing to 80 degrees, and there was nary a cloud in the sky. This was the type of Florida morning that would typically send the Elliots cowering indoors, for God forbid that they should get a patchy tan, or worse, freckles! Anne, though, was an Elliot in name but not in spirit, and so she had no reservations about soaking up the balmy Florida sun. In fact, she relished it. Anne always planned her pilgrimages to visit her father and sister such that her trip would end with the Florida International Air Show, such that the Air Show could serve as an enticement to get her through a week at the Elliots' Florida condo.

Perhaps "sufferance" would be a better word to describe the yearly visits, for the Elliot lifestyle was completely not Anne's cup of tea. At nearly sixty years of age, Walter Elliot was still an incorrigible dandy with his baby-white Botoxed face; perfectly slicked hair with never a strand out of place; and skin-tight Zegna and Armani outfits. Amongst the circle of wealthy retirees in which the Elliots moved, it was often rumored that Walter Elliot was gay, never mind that he did have three daughters. Elizabeth, her eldest sister, was tall, willowy and blonde – everything that Anne was not – and an entire bedroom in the condo had been fashioned into a giant walk-in wardrobe for her endless array of clothes, handbags and shoes. Current-season Versace, Dior, Chanel... it was like stepping into the latest issue of _Vogue _magazine. Depending on Elizabeth's whims, Anne would either be dragged along on her endless facials and hairstyling sessions, being coiffed, primped and preened until the real Anne became invisible, hidden away within a solid shell of makeup and hairspray; or she would be simply left to her own devices at the condo, forgotten, while the pair went on their society rounds. Anne infinitely preferred the latter, for her wallet protested less that way. Most of the time when Anne was dragged along to the preening sessions, it was because she was expected to foot the bill for all three of them – and afterwards, they would invariably parade her around the Florida country-club set, trying to pair her up with some kind of namby-pamby scion or other.

The Air Show was always a welcome breath of fresh air after a stifling week with the Elliots. Every year, Anne contacted local nonprofits to lead a group of high school students on a tour of the show site, where she would expound to the students the background stories behind each aircraft, both the old and the new, displayed at that year's event. Finding ways to get youths excited about aviation was the least she could do to pay forward the way in which the sky had served as the canvas for someone who had been – and still was – very special to her, to weave his biggest dreams. She especially had a soft spot for teenage girls – being bookended by two vapid sisters sapping away at her time and energy all her life, she felt it all the more important that girls should be encouraged to consider options beyond "housewife", "stay-at-home mom", and "arm candy" for their future. This time, she had ten high school girls with her, and they were camped outside waiting for the highlight of the day – the US Air Force Thunderbirds aerobatic display.

Shading her eyes with her hand, Anne looked up toward the sky in anticipation of the day's signature performance. A deafening rumble rolled through the general hubbub, and the crowd fell silent as six white Lockheed Martin F-16 aircraft rushed into view in a perfect straight line, and then swept out in curves as they fanned out in different directions directly overhead above the captivated audience.

If she blanked out the constant roar of the engines, Anne thought, the aircraft had the grace of kites – actually, kites on steroids – floating about in the sky. The F-16s soared, swirled, and dipped in the air, leaving snow-white lines, shapes, patterns in their wake. No matter how many times she'd watched it before, this precisely timed, intricately choreographed aerial ballet never failed to re-ignite Anne's excitement about aviation. She always chose to bring high school students to the Air Show because she believed that no other magic bullet could be more effective to spark their enthusiasm.

It was time for the final formation. Two aircraft swooped down in mirrored arcs, forming a heart shape in the air. The last cadenza of the display was the whoosh of a third aircraft as it wheeled around and shot upward into the sky, right through the middle of the heart shape. The aircraft's trajectory traced out the image of Cupid's arrow, piercing right through the heart.

Anne did not even have to see the number painted on the aircraft to know exactly which one it was. It was #5, Lead Solo, piloted by Major Frederick Wentworth. He would have to be the one who performed the most fearless gravity-defying stunts of the whole bunch. Even though Frederick was medium-sized compared to the others, he naturally stood out amongst the line of pilot photos that ran across the top of the Thunderbirds poster because of the drive and fire evident in his facial expression and the way he carried himself.

As the aircraft receded out of view, the spell lifted and the milling crowd slowly came back to life. A line of people, mostly children and teenagers, but also some women in their twenties and thirties, quickly formed before the reception table where the pilots would gather to give autographs. Ditching their picnic lunches, Anne's group of girls scrambled up and made a beeline for the autograph queue, posters in hand.

Having landed and parked their aircraft, the pilots entered in single file and assembled before the snaking line to sign autographs. From Anne's vantage point, she could see Frederick in profile like an Adonis, his relaxed, confident posture displaying how much he was enjoying the attention. He fairly soaked up the adulation as the girls and women jostled and clamored for his autograph. _All they know about him is just the external shell,_ Anne thought, _while I, I was there behind him all the way as he grew from just a raw boy into the man they see. Yet now, I am no closer to him than they are – in fact, I can never even be as close as them, for he must never know that I am here and I could never approach him directly again. _But there was no place for bitterness, for Anne knew full well that their current estrangement had been completely her own doing.

The girls were skipping back to Anne with their signed posters.

"Major Wentworth is a fox and a half!"

"Wooh, Freddy boy! _Sex_-y!"

"Miss Elliot! I got an extra poster for you! It's got Major Wentworth's signature. See, see, see? Isn't he the cutest of them all?"

Anne wished to heaven that all the tittering and ogling would stop. The irreverence in the way they referred to Frederick – her former best friend and soul mate – irked her to no end. So much for her noble intentions of inspiring girls about aviation – it just had to be the pilots, not the planes or even the visual impact of the flying display, which became the primary source of excitement for the girls. In fact, the entire affair made a mockery of her high-flown aspirations to challenge gender stereotypes, Anne thought.

"C'mon everyone, let's get going." Anne had allowed herself enough time for woolgathering. Now, she'd better get down to business and round up everyone to the static display. The collective groan only further reinforced Anne's irritation at the girls' obvious interest in nothing but the pilots. Especially since she felt like she'd explode if she heard anything more about the charms of one particular pilot.

To keep her mind fixed to the task at hand, she reminded herself of the line she used every time she needed to fend off those misguided matchmaking attempts on the part of Walter and Elizabeth: "Well, looks like it's time for me to come out with my true inclinations - I'm a jetrosexual. Every day, I spend my day surrounded by airplanes and that's enough for me."

It would have to be enough for her - for now definitely; perhaps even forever.


	2. Chapter 2: Getting Air

**Chapter 2 – Getting Air**

_November 1996, Cambridge, Massachusetts_

Sleek. Fast. Lean. To Frederick, the effect was perfect. A slim, white cardboard aircraft, stripped bare of all extraneous trappings, not even encumbered with the weight of colored paint, shot forward as straight as William Tell's arrow and landed neatly at the other end of the room, inches away from the opposite wall.

Their freshman engineering design course had culminated in this little show-and-tell: a competition where each student designed, built, and demonstrated a launching mechanism for a projectile of their choosing. And nobody did show-and-tell, at least the "show" part, better than Frederick Wentworth. Every inch of him radiated with confidence and self-satisfaction as his creation performed exactly as it was designed to do. The image was complete by the fact that he'd volunteered to go first, just so that he could open the session with a bang.

This was Frederick at his best – hungry, restless, and addicted to the thrill of flight. Ever since he had learned to crawl, Frederick had never been content just sitting still. As a little boy barely starting school, Frederick had already roamed all the parks in his Detroit suburban neighborhood, finding the best – which usually meant the highest - obstacles from which to launch himself on his skateboard. Getting air was the way he escaped the stuffy atmosphere of the house with its perennially quiet, hushed tones. Nobody was allowed to make any sound inside, because his mother was always ill. Back then, he hadn't understood the nature of cancer; he had just wanted to get out of the house, far away so that he could do his own thing without his siblings saying "Don't" over his shoulder all the time. Being airborne provided a welcome release to all his pent-up energy; and he had an uncanny ability to always land on his feet. He would trudge home filthy, scuffed, and scraped; but in all his years of going to the skate park, he never got any injuries more serious than that – it was as though he was a cat with nine lives.

Amongst the three Wentworth siblings, Frederick was somewhat a misfit – with their parents being both university dons, academic inclination had been a basic expectation of a Wentworth kid. But when Frederick was growing up, his mother was already fighting her battle with cancer; and with everyone caught up in looking after her and the household at large, there was very little time for anyone at home to mentor or teach Frederick. The issue wasn't really Frederick's grades per se, for he was a bright kid and always managed to perform respectably at school no matter how little time he appeared to be spending at his books. But unlike his bookish brother Edward, action interested him more than theory; and he had too much energy to be cooped up in the house for any length of time. And so every day after school, he wandered farther and farther away from home with his skateboard.

By the time he was thirteen, Frederick knew the all the skate parks in metro Detroit like the back of his hand. He'd bought a BMX bike with the money he earned from his paper route, and it served not only to expand his radius of exploration, but also as another platform for performing stunts. On that fateful day, though, he hadn't gone far. With his mother having been hospitalized for six weeks on end, he'd known the situation wasn't good. The last few days, she had already fallen into a coma, but nobody could predict exactly when the moment would come. So he stayed close in order to be there when it was time to say goodbye; only that when he finally did, he wasn't sure if she could still hear him anymore.

Still, with their mother they'd had some advance warning; when their father's heart gave out, it was swift and sudden, and it had happened right in the middle of a tennis game, no less. The sea change in their lives came when they vacated their house to rent it out – their mother's treatment had sapped the family's savings, leaving the orphaned Wentworth kids asset rich but cash poor – and moved to a tiny apartment in a hollowed-out Detroit slum. Still only twenty, his eldest sister Sophia dropped out of college, working as a receptionist to support the family; while Edward and Frederick had to brave the hostile environment of inner-city public school and establish their social pecking order amongst the kids in the 'hood.

Though Frederick knew that remaining on the path of the straight and narrow was the only hope he had to reclaim their former lifestyle, he wasn't like Edward, who was completely impervious to all the social ostracism that came with being classified as a geek. "Higher Ed" was just the tamest name the kids threw at Edward, in the mocking way that only high school kids could; the names and the bullying got worse every day and it still rolled off Edward like water off a duck's back. Not so for Frederick, though. Appearances and image mattered to him too much.

Surviving, fitting in, that was his skill. He was a cat with nine lives, after all. Frederick had all the accoutrements of just any other kid in the 'hood – the knitted skullcap, the baggy sweatshirt and jeans, right down to the oversized sneakers. His sandy hair was perpetually overgrown, hanging into his eyes on purpose so nobody could remember what his face looked like. In this way, he went on – quietly slipping out of the less desirable activities that he wanted no part of, yet trying to blend in perfectly so no one would notice. He also used his prowess with the skateboard and the BMX to distract his peers from the fact that he had a different set of aspirations from them. At that point, though, he had no idea what kind of tangible form those aspirations would take. Most white-collar jobs were staid and boring, and he couldn't imagine himself sitting at a desk all day without feeling stifled. So although Frederick knew that not going to college was not an option, he had no idea what he would do after that, or even how he would be able to afford college in the first place. With the future being so uncertain, it was more convenient to just live in the present, so he spent day after day getting air at the skate parks, getting by one day at a time. Trying to do well enough in school to go to college, while trying not to let anyone see how hard he tried.

Yet without even trying so much, somehow he managed to emerge tops in Michigan for the American Mathematics Competition 10 during sophomore year. He resented it – that was a surefire way to fly the freak flag, or rather (and worse), the geek flag – but it just happened. That exploit earned him an appointment with the guidance counselor. Despite all his efforts to stay under the radar, Frederick was forced out of hiding.

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><p>Mr. Raftery had absolutely no idea what type of kid to expect in his office that morning. Kids from inner-city public schools like this just didn't win math competitions – not when they were put up against their peers from far more affluent backgrounds; kids who had been hot-housed for success from a very young age. The name of Frederick Wentworth was not familiar to him, which might not be a bad thing in itself – it meant that this kid had managed to stay out of trouble so far, and he had to admit, it wasn't often that a kid got his notice for any <em>good<em> reason. Perhaps this kid would be some kind of precocious Doogie Howser, chattering on a mile a minute; or maybe he would be a skinny, awkward geek with big plastic-framed glasses.

Whatever it was, Mr. Raftery was actually slightly disappointed with the kid who finally slouched and shuffled into his doorway. This kid didn't look like anything out of the ordinary – he could have passed hundreds of kids in the hallway, and this boy was so underwhelming in his appearance, he would have faded right into the background.

"Good morning, Mr. Raftery, sir", the kid mumbled, but didn't take a step forward. He remained standing in the doorway, looking at the floor. His face was hardly visible behind the too-long bangs that obscured his eyes. Though the kid had clearly been brought up with some concept of manners, it was equally obvious that he was more frightened than anything else.

"Good morning, Frederick. Come in and have a seat," Mr. Raftery tried to keep his tone as friendly as possible. He extended a hand to the kid, and tried to look him in the eye. "Congratulations."

"Thank you, sir." The kid took the proffered hand and shook it, but didn't look up.

"Frederick, you may wish to know that you're the first student from our school to ever win the AMC at a statewide level. That's an honor. And it means a lot of new opportunities will be open to you. For starters, you'll be invited to take the US Junior Mathematical Olympiad examination, followed by the American Invitational Mathematics Examination, and the USA Mathematical Olympiad. If you do well there, you could qualify for a summer program to prepare you for the International Math Olympiad team. I strongly encourage you to take the JMO - we'll try our best to give the coaching you need. That will give you exposure to a much higher level of math training and competition than you can get in your regular classes here. The fact that you've been able to hold your own, even against others who have benefited from more coaching and more resources, shows how strong a potential you've got. I'd be happy to work with you to make the most of that potential."

"Sir -" the kid gave him a flickering glance - "thank you, that's very kind of you. But I ... I don't know if that's really what I want to do."

"Why? Then, what do you want?"

"I don't know." The kid slouched in his chair, his eyes wandering all over Mr. Raftery's desk. "But I ... sitting at a desk doing math all day ... I'd be bored. And miserable."

"So what do you like to do? What do you do in your free time?"

"Um ... getting air. On my skateboard," the kid hastily explained. He looked like he wished he could just bolt out of the room any minute.

Suddenly, the kid's eyes focused on something on the desk. It was an ROTC brochure. For the first time in the entire interview, the kid looked up and faced Mr. Raftery directly.

"Sir? May I borrow this, please? About the Olympiad – I'll think about it and get back to ya. I promise."

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><p>"Sir." It was a very different Frederick Wentworth who walked in the door one week later. The kid seemed to be almost reborn - he had a clear sense of purpose and self, and he showed it. "I've made my decision about what I want to do with my future, and I'd like to tell you about it. Do you have some time for me now?"<p>

"Sure – come in."

The kid – no, _Frederick_ – for he now that he had finally found his identity, his name was indelibly stamped on him – sat down smartly. He had taken the effort to comb his hair in a parting and slick the bangs over to one side with gel – never mind that after this meeting he'd probably run to the bathroom and wash it off all over again.

"Sir, I know I have to go to college. It's the only way I can get myself out of this neigh– um, I mean, how I can build a better life for myself and my family."

"All right, and what do you plan to study in college?"

"Engineering. Aeronautical engineering. It'll help me when I go into the Air Force. I've thought it all out – I'd die of boredom doing those kinds of work where I'm parked at a desk all the time. I need a job that gives me a kind of kick, like how I feel when I'm on my skateboard, y'know? So flying, it's like the same feeling, only even more exciting. _That's_ what I wanna do."

"So you won't be doing the Math Olympiad then? Can't I at least try to change your mind? It seems to be such a waste – it's not easy to find kids like you around here. You would do our school proud."

"No, I won't. I'm sorry. But I _will_ be trying for college, and for the ROTC scholarship. See, they even _pay_ for your college. The military, that is. And in the Air Force, I could do our country proud."

"Well, then. I guess you've made up your mind. But at least, you could shoot for one of the top colleges. For aeronautical engineering ... hmm ... let's see ... you could go to MIT, or Stanford. You at least owe yourself that, to do proper justice to your talent."

"Yessir. I'll try."

"Do you know what it takes to get into a good college?"

"I have to study hard, I guess. I've got a 4.0 GPA now and I'll try my best to keep it up."

"Well, you'll need more than just a 4.0 GPA to distinguish yourself when you're competing against kids from all across the country, the entire world in fact. A 4.0 is a dime a dozen out there. So you have to build up some special achievements, if not in math, then in some other area. It'll help you not only for college, but for the ROTC scholarship as well."

"Like, how?"

"For one, the military needs people with good leadership skills. So you need to find ways to show you can be a leader. You like action – say, why don't you ditch the skateboard some of the time and join a team sport in school?"

Frederick beamed. For once, he felt like they were both on the same side.

"Thank you sir, I'll do that. I need to go to class, so I've gotta be going." Standing up, Frederick pulled out the ROTC brochure from his backpack and handed it to Mr. Raftery with both hands. "Here's your brochure."

"Keep it, son. And good luck."

* * *

><p>From then onwards, Frederick relegated the skateboard to being a hobby, rather than being an obsession. Taking Mr. Raftery's advice, he tried out for the football team and ended up playing quarterback in junior and senior year. In that way, he established his status as a jock, which actually enhanced his popularity, while also giving him something else to round out his resume with.<p>

From then onwards, whenever he _did_ go to the skate park, Frederick embellished his moves a little more each time. He honed his showmanship skills carefully, all the while dreaming about a future when he wouldn't be just getting air on the skateboard, but getting truly airborne in his fighter jet.

From then onwards, Frederick cropped his hair into a spiky, close-cut style with the top combed flat. Now that he had a clear goal he could wear on his sleeve, he could start to show his face to the world again. He had already proven his ability to survive – now that he had successfully blended in, he could finally afford to stand out.

And once Frederick stopped being ashamed about having ambitions, he would settle for nothing less than perfection. That was how he got himself into MIT.


	3. Chapter 3: Learning to Fly

_Disclaimer: "Learning to Fly" belongs to Pink Floyd. I love it too much not to use it, though. =P_

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><p><strong>Chapter 3 – Learning to Fly<strong>

Now that his job was done, Frederick watched the rest of the proceedings from the back of the classroom, arms folded, wearing a satisfied smirk on his face. There were various flimsy editions of paper planes, none quite as sleek or sophisticated as his. There were bow-and-arrow contraptions, Ping-Pong balls, and some idiot had fashioned an imitation of a cannon, using a squash ball as the cannonball. The ball dropped to the ground with a feeble _plop_ and came to a stop after rolling about four more inches on the floor. _Duh, didn't that guy have any idea how heavy a squash ball could be? What an anti-climax_. Frederick felt smug.

Class was nearly over, and there were about twenty projectiles strewn across the floor, none quite as far along as Frederick's. There was just one more demo left to go before Frederick would be pronounced the victor of the bunch.

"Hi everyone, I'm Anne Elliot."

Before Frederick could even figure out where the voice came from, a round hot-pink blob traced a long arc through the air, hit the opposite wall with an audible _thwack_, and then slid down vertically, landing exactly at the foot of the wall.

And so the final ranking emerged: Anne Elliot, #1, 5.0 meters; Frederick Wentworth, #2, 4.88 meters; and Peter Chen, #3, 4.72 meters. Still stunned at the suddenness with which his victory was snatched away, Frederick wandered to the other end of the room, picked up the offending pink blob, and turned it over in his hands.

It was a replica of a _pig_, of all things. And its creator had obviously taken a lot of care to make sure that everyone knew just what it was intended to be. The body was made from a balloon, probably to save some weight, but encased within a foam-board frame from which the ears, legs, snout and tail were carved. It seemed the pig's snout had absorbed most of the impact with the wall, as the foam-board had squished in. The pig had a ridiculous cross-eyed expression, with big round cartoon eyes drawn on the balloon with Magic Marker. How this _thing_, which wasn't even aerodynamic, and which carried so much unnecessary weight, could fly farther than Frederick's lean, mean machine spoke volumes about the power of the mechanism that launched it.

A hand sneaked into Frederick's field of vision. Of course, it was the owner of the pig, demanding the return of her rightful property.

The girl – Anne Elliot, her name was? – was actually _laughing at him_. At close range, he could see the red-dyed highlights in her seemingly mousy brown hair. She was tiny, coming only up to his shoulders, but from this distance, at this time, she had so much presence that he couldn't imagine how it was possible that he had gone through almost an entire semester without noticing her before. With her short pixie haircut, earth-colored canvas parka, leather messenger bag and military-style leather black boots peeking out from under her skinny straight-cut jeans, this girl exuded a subtly edgy kind of charm. _Man, this chick is actually cool_, Frederick found himself thinking.

"A pig? Why a pig?" Lost in his thoughts, Frederick blurted out the words before he knew it. He cursed himself for sounding so stupid.

Anne looked amused, more than anything else. _She actually looks quite pretty when she smiles_, thought Frederick.

"Oh, that." She chuckled. "It's a tribute to Pink Floyd. I know the song they use the flying pig for is from _Animals_, but I was actually thinking about their song _Learning to Fly_ when I did this. Do you know the song? It's from _A Momentary Lapse of Reason_. 1987. Go check it out."

"Oh." Frederick seemed to be temporarily robbed of the power of speech. He was totally befuddled – there was a real, explainable _concept_ behind that ridiculous pig?

"And by the way, can I have my pig back, please?" She plucked the item out of his hand and walked out of the room, leaving him standing dumbly there.

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><p>The fact that Frederick actually bought the album was testimony to the level of his curiosity about Anne Elliot and the inspiration behind her project. Normally he never wasted any money on CDs. He preferred to listen to the radio and record the songs he liked onto cassette tapes. That way, he could compile tapes with only the songs he liked, without throwing away good money on forgettable songs that had no purpose except as boring filler material.<p>

Frederick had never even bothered to invest in a CD player, so he played the album on his computer CD-ROM drive. The song was the second track on the album:

_Into the distance, a ribbon of black _

_Stretched to the point of no turning back_

_A flight of fancy on a windswept field_

_Standing alone, my senses reeled_

_Fatal attraction is holding me fast_

_How can I escape this irresistible grasp?_

_Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky_

_Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I_

_Ice is forming on the tips of my wings_

_Unheeded warnings, I thought I thought of everything_

_No navigation to guide my way home_

_Unladen, empty and turned to stone_

_A soul in tension is learning to fly_

_Condition grounded but determined to try_

_Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies_

_Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I_

_Above the planet on a wing and a prayer_

_My grubby halo, a vapor trail in the empty air_

_Across the clouds I see my shadow fly_

_Out of the corner of my watering eye_

_A dream unthreatened by the morning light_

_Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night_

_There's no sensation to compare with this_

_Suspended animation, a state of bliss_

_Can't keep my eye from the circling skies_

_Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I _

The lyrics spoke to Frederick in a way that no other song had ever done before. To date, his musical diet had consisted largely of heavy metal and rap – Metallica, Korn, Tupac Shakur and the like. It was part of his way of fitting in with the other kids at school. But those songs were largely about violence and hate – and he had seen firsthand how anger, coupled with a sense of hopelessness, could drive impressionable kids down the wrong path. For someone like him, who wanted to write a different story for himself – well, he couldn't identify with those songs at a personal level, so they were all just rhythm and sounds to him. This song, though, perfectly captured the feeling of joy and freedom he'd derived from getting airborne since the very first day he could stand up on a skateboard. It also spoke to his yearning for a sense of belonging for him and his siblings, not just social survival at school, but to make their mark and reclaim their position in society at large. Yet, unlike other songs of disenfranchisement, there was an element of hope as well. That spoke to his desire to move upward, to help create a better life for himself, Sophia, and Edward.

For Anne Elliot to dedicate an entire project to the song, it had to mean something very special to her, too. And Frederick was determined to find out how the same song could speak to the both of them so powerfully, whether it was in the same or in different ways.

* * *

><p>"Anne Ell-i-ot. Do you have anything on for Friday night, by any chance? If you're still free, I was wondering if you could grace me with your company for dinner." Frederick leaned on the doorjamb, trying to show off his graceful, athletic figure to his best advantage. He deliberately threw Anne a Cheshire-cat type of grin, lending a farcical air to the entire invitation.<p>

Anne did not trust Frederick Wentworth, because in general, she did not trust any guy who was too handsome and too conscious of it. And boy, did Frederick flaunt it – the too-cool-for-school attitude at that Monday's project demo session being one of the prime examples of late (if she excluded this little performance unfolding before her). She felt quite satisfied with herself for taking a little wind out of his sails with that one. His dumbfounded expression when she snatched the pig back from his open hand had been priceless.

Ever since she'd been old enough for guys to think about asking her out, Anne had had to contend with guys asking her out for reasons that had nothing to do with any kind of real liking for her as a person. There was no end to the stream of preppy boarding-school boys who asked her out for dates, dripping with gentlemanly politeness, sometimes even putting on the sweet shy-boy act, only to ditch her in favor of Elizabeth the minute they were able to secure the introduction – through her, no less. The more handsome the boys were, the worse it got. Jocks were no use either – usually, they'd be again looking for some kind of arm candy, and mostly if they looked for her, it was either for the bragging rights of dating an Elliot girl at the times when her sister was taken by somebody else, or out of whatever harebrained dares or bets they'd made amongst themselves. As far as she, Elizabeth and boys were concerned, the concept of "the heir and the spare" was alive and well. And their youngest sister Mary, now a freshman in high school, would probably be joining in the fray before long. Anne had been naive too many times in high school, and now she'd learned her lesson. With Frederick Wentworth being both handsome and a jock, and strutting around brimming with cockiness at that, he couldn't be up to any good trying to ask her out. It was just an open invitation for her to prick his ego a little bit further.

"I'm sorry, but I already have plans for Friday," she replied, with a studiedly nonchalant air. "But if you _really_ want to hang out with me sometime over the weekend, you can join me for a run on Sunday morning. Meet me at 6 a.m. at the Massachusetts Avenue junction along the Charles River."

To Anne's surprise, Frederick wasn't intimidated. He actually agreed, and if he was at all shocked that she would challenge him to an early morning run, when November was fast turning into December no less, he did a very good job of not showing it.

_Wait and see_, thought Anne gleefully, _he has fallen for it hook, line and sinker_.


	4. Chapter 4: Gump

**Chapter 4 - Gump**

On that Sunday morning, Anne got to the junction at 5.55 am. So when Frederick showed up at 6.00 sharp, Anne was already in the middle of her warm-up exercises. It was already early December, the week just before finals, and on that clear, cold morning, the temperature was somewhere in the 30s, but Anne was comfortably snug in her fleece top and running tights. That gave her a psychological advantage already.

_Sun Tzu's Art of War_ said: "Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories."

As a consequence of living in an all-girls dorm, the "know thy enemy" part was relatively easy for Anne. Within weeks from the start of semester, Anne had already been fed with more gossip about the male denizens of the MIT Class of '00 than she ever cared to know about. Until now, that was. For this mission, all the snippets of information about Frederick Wentworth were getting to be quite useful. She knew he was an Air Force ROTC cadet, and that he had played football in high school. She also knew he was living in a frat house, even though he was also a freshman. This led her to two conclusions: he was probably too much of a party animal to have any above-board intentions towards her, and that it would take a good deal of strategy to fashion a physical challenge where she could best him. At least on the second count, she was correct.

Anne knew herself, too. In an out-and-out challenge of strength or speed, undoubtedly she would be absolutely no match for Frederick Wentworth, not by a long way. But there was one area where she could possibly poke through a chink in Frederick's armor: endurance. Football players, after all, were trained for short bursts of intense activity. Meanwhile, Anne knew she could hold her own against many guys in long-distance running. In fact, Anne's petite, slender physique was the perfect marathoner's build.

Truth to tell, Anne had chanced upon cross-country running as a complete fluke. Junior year at high school was when she'd gotten her big break – for one, Elizabeth had finally graduated, releasing Anne from the obligation of being a perpetual hanger-on to the group of popular girls where Elizabeth had been the queen bee. Although Anne was good with one-on-one friendships and had her own set of close friends, Elizabeth had dragged her around for as long as they were in school together – after all, shouldn't her kid sister be one of her group of followers? Anne was too serious and too good at math and science to be seriously considered as one of the popular girls, and so the clique had made her life totally miserable in freshman and sophomore year at boarding school. With Elizabeth gone, Anne could finally find her own set of friends, interests and activities, and cross-country suddenly came to her naturally, especially since she lost her baby fat that year as well. Not only was it an outlet for her to release her frustrations, it also gained her new-found respect, even amongst the popular clique that Elizabeth had once ruled. Where they had previously teased her mercilessly for being Elizabeth's gawky, geeky little sister, now nobody dared to say a word when she could outrun all of them.

* * *

><p>When Anne had brought home her cross-country trophies from boarding school in the summer after high school graduation, though, the reactions from her family couldn't have been more predictable.<p>

"Anne, for heaven's sake, have you been _running_? You really shouldn't – it makes your legs too muscular, and that's not at all attractive in a girl. Maybe you can sign up for Pilates classes – that'll help to undo the damage. If you don't stretch your legs properly, all the muscles will turn into fat. Fat legs! God!" Walter shuddered.

"You run _cross-country_? Like Forrest Gump?" Elizabeth probably didn't realize how ugly she looked when she curled her lip into a sneer like that.

_Just cool it,_ Anne told herself. _Be the bigger person and let it go, because there's no way you can win an argument with Elizabeth using reason. Zen … Zen … _It would have worked any other time, but Anne was too passionate about cross-country to ignore this particular barb.

"For your information, I don't run _across the country_ like Forrest Gump. In case you don't know, cross-country is a specific genre, with a specific distance, which is three miles." The minute the words left Anne's mouth, she regretted letting her emotions get the better of her brain.

"Anne _dear_, whatever happened to your sense of humor? Do you have to take everything so _literally_?" Indeed, Anne had made it too easy for Elizabeth.

"Taking words literally is a symptom of Asperger's Syndrome. So is going on and on, in great detail, about a specific subject. Shouldn't you see a shrink and get yourself checked out, Anne?"

"Mary, _do _you have to come up with a fanciful name for everything? Forrest Gump is a _retard_, period."

This time around, Anne _did_ succeed in keeping her mouth shut, and leaving Elizabeth and Mary to it. She knew exactly what her sisters would be calling her all summer long – and all too predictably, her guess had proven to be absolutely right.

* * *

><p>"Today, we'll be running up to that bridge over there." The bridge Anne was pointing to was well within visible range, even in the pre-dawn light. "Then, we'll cross over to the opposite side of the river, and come back to Massachusetts Avenue. And the route ends right here, at this spot."<p>

The pace was easy and relaxed, definitely quite manageable to Frederick since regular physical training was an integral part of his ROTC program. So this chick wanted to run, huh? He'd humor her by jogging around for two or three miles. _Elementary, my dear Watson_.

"Say, have you watched _Space Jam_?" While they were at it, he might as well make some small talk. It would be the polite thing to do on a date, if running along the Charles River on a chilly winter morning could be considered a date at all.

"Shh. I don't talk when I'm running. It breaks up my concentration," Anne hissed. She didn't drop the pace or even turn her head to look at him. It amused Frederick that Anne should take herself so seriously when she was running – she was the image of complete focus.

Half an hour later, Frederick wasn't so amused after all. They were on the Harvard Bridge, approaching the same junction on the MIT side where they had met. Somewhere along the way, Anne had gradually, imperceptibly upped the pace. And she showed no signs of stopping at the junction, either. Seamlessly, they passed through the junction and embarked on another round of the same route.

And so it went, for another three more rounds. By this time, Frederick was visibly shivering – he hadn't counted on being out here so long, and even though they were constantly on the move, he also wasn't moving fast enough to keep warm with just a thin tracksuit on. But he couldn't stop right in the middle; it would be too much like admitting defeat. Especially when Anne was making it amply clear who was boss on this run. She dictated the pace, and the distance, all the way.

Finally, Anne ground to a stop at the junction. They had been running for almost two hours. And Frederick had never felt more cheated in his life.

"No fair. You said we were going to end right here, at _this_ spot." Since when was Frederick Wentworth reduced to whining? In the one week since he'd become acquainted with Anne Elliot, this was the second time she'd made him look like a total idiot.

"And so I did. I said the route ends right here. But I never made any promises about how many laps we would run, did I?"

"So what was the distance we covered today?" If Frederick had anything to say about it, it felt like they had run an ultramarathon.

"About 12 miles, I believe. Four laps of three miles apiece." Anne shot him a pitying look. "You look like you're about to freeze to death out there. Care to join me for breakfast and coffee at McDonald's?"

* * *

><p>Over coffee and hot cakes at McDonald's, Frederick finally got round to broaching the subject of the song.<p>

"By the way, thank you."

"Huh? For what?"

"For the song. It was great – I don't set much store by most rock songs nowadays, they're too cynical. For that matter, I don't care much for those PC Disney bulls*** either – too idealistic for my liking. This song was _real_, yet hopeful. It's not easy to find songs like that."

"My sentiments exactly," Anne was impressed by the frankness and sincerity of Frederick's appraisal of the song. "That was the main reason why this song is my favorite, too. I identify with it in a lot of ways. It gives a voice to my greatest wish – to have the freedom to chase after my dreams."

"And what would that be? You're not thinking about flying, are you?"

"No, definitely not – much as I believe in equal opportunity, I still believe that flying is very much a man's job. I could never reach the controls, for one thing." Anne smiled self-deprecatingly. "I guess I'm lazy, 'cause I appreciate flying more as a passenger after all. When I was younger, Father used to bring us – my sisters and I – travelling all around the world. Flying was a very different experience back then – now, people don't think twice about going up an airplane in their bermudas and flip-flops, and I think that's really sad 'cause just about ten years ago when we were kids, flying used to be a really special occasion. People actually dressed up to go on an airplane.

"To me, taking an airplane was part of the whole excitement of going to someplace new. And nothing fascinated me more than seeing all the different types of airplanes. When I was little, Father told me the Boeing 747 was the biggest aircraft in the world. And I actually thought there was only one 747 in the entire world. So when we took the Pan Am to go to Japan, I was so thrilled to be in the world's _only_ 747. And it was so cool, with the spiral staircase inside and all.

"That was when I started paying attention to the different types of aircraft. I wanted to know why some airplanes had two engines while others had three or four; why some of the engines were below the wings and others at the back of the aircraft; why some aircraft have T-tails. That's how I ended up here, I guess. How is the experience of flying?"

"I have no idea – not yet, anyways. I haven't been in an aircraft before."

_That was too honest_, Frederick realized belatedly, for if Anne heard what he'd just said carefully enough, she'd rightly draw the conclusion that not only had he not flown an aircraft as a pilot before, in fact he had never even ridden in an airplane. True, the experience of actual flying would have to wait, for he wouldn't be allowed to start applying to fly until junior year. He didn't particularly want to admit, though, that he wasn't even sure if he'd ever been in an airplane, as his family had stopped travelling since he was very young, too young to properly remember.

"That's OK – I'm sure you'll get the chance soon enough."

Regardless of whether she was consciously making an effort to deflect the topic or that it simply didn't occur to her, Frederick was grateful that Anne didn't make a big deal out of it. From her genteel manners to the fact that she'd travelled extensively as a child, it was obvious that she came from a much more privileged background than he. But wait, how did she know that he was aspiring to be a pilot in the first place? He had to satisfy his curiosity, so he asked her.

"Word gets around." The reply was as cryptic as it was cool, and it unsettled Frederick that she probably knew more about him than he did about her.

"Where are you headed to for winter break?" He figured it was time to change the subject.

"I live in the suburbs near Detroit. My father is in the auto industry."

This was a gross understatement, but Anne still felt guarded about saying that she lived in Grosse Pointe, to be exact, and that the Elliot family had grown magnificently wealthy through the automotive business. Elliot Machine Systems Co (or ELMSCO for short) had been supplying steering components and subsystems for automobiles since the days of the Model T Ford, and Walter Elliot was part of the third generation of this Elliot dynasty. But Walter hated to get his hands dirty, and so he mainly played the role of a passive investor, leaving the running of the company to a distant third cousin, William Elliot. As for the Elliot girls, Walter didn't care if they never worked, either – as long as they did him credit amongst the circles of America's rich and famous he mixed with, all the better to eventually secure a trophy husband. But Anne was interested in neither, and so she maintained a respectful distance from Walter. He would never be "Dad" to her, always "Father". Only Elizabeth, who was virtually crafted in his image, would ever be close enough to him to call him "Dad".

The fact that they came from the same hometown gave Anne and Frederick something new to talk about, and Anne had enough of a down-to-earth perspective to relate to the wider Detroit outside of Grosse Pointe. Unlike her father and sisters, she had never been in favor of wrapping herself up in a glass bubble, just because they happened to be born rich.

"And are you going back to Detroit for winter break as well?"

"Nope. I'm staying put right here. My sister just got married over the summer, and she and my brother-in-law are now living in Guam. He's in the Navy. And my brother's studying over in the UK." He modestly omitted that Edward was actually studying at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship.

"How about your parents?"

Frederick looked away.

"It's just the three of us now, actually. Four, if you count my brother-in-law. So there's nobody left in Detroit to go back to. Cambridge is my home, or at least the only home I've got in the US."

_So that could be why he was living in the frat house, instead of in a dorm_. Just in the space of one morning, Anne had found quite a few reasons to challenge her previous assumptions about Frederick Wentworth.

"Well, it's kind of similar for me. It's just Father and my sisters at home – and my grandma. I hardly knew my mom, and my baby sis Mary never knew her at all."

Maybe it was sympathy, or maybe it was just the fact that they had more in common than they'd previously realized, but from then on, the conversation flowed nonstop, until they realized that it was practically lunchtime, and nearly half the day was gone. With finals coming up the following week, they both would have to return to their respective residences to get some studying done. Still, Frederick insisted on walking Anne back to her dorm.

"That was fun." Frederick tried to sound as casual as possible, while trying also to stave off the moment when he'd have to leave Anne at the doorstep of McCormick Hall. "Let's do this again sometime. Maybe after winter break."

Anne took full advantage of his ambiguity. Even though her attitude towards Frederick Wentworth had softened somewhat, one conversation, no matter how wonderful, would not be enough to convince her fully of his sincerity as _her_ friend, rather than using her as a conduit to her sister as so many other guys had. He would still have to prove himself over time.

"Sure. One of my goals is to run the Boston Marathon before graduating from college. And I could definitely use a training buddy. Are you on, or not?"

"I'm on."

Whatever Anne may have thought, Frederick was fully aware of the magnitude of the challenge. Yet he didn't have to think twice before saying it.


	5. Chapter 5: Gasoline

**Chapter 5 – Gasoline**

_December 1996, Grosse Pointe, Michigan_

"Nice haircut, Anne." It was only the second day of winter break, but Charles Musgrove wasted no time in showing up at the Elliots' porch in his souped-up Honda Civic.

"Thanks. I haven't cut it this short since you took it upon yourself to cut my hair, way back when we were little kids."

They laughed, remembering that long-ago incident. Walter Elliot had considered it a necessary rite of passage for each of his girls to get a perm for the first day of first grade. Elizabeth had loved showing off her Shirley Temple ringlets, but when it came to Anne's turn, she'd dreaded the thought of the curling iron. Charles had chivalrously offered to spare her from the whole business by snipping off her pigtails, but after the event, he'd realized the shorn tufts of hair he'd produced weren't quite the effect he had been looking for. Terrified, Charles had run blubbering to his mom, begging her to salvage the situation. In the end, Lucy Musgrove had tidied Anne's hair into a chin-length bob with bangs, a la _To Kill A Mockingbird_. Anne had loved the style, even though Walter hadn't.

* * *

><p>The auto-repair chain that Henry and Lucy Musgrove owned was one of the biggest customers of ELMSCO's aftermarket parts. Usually, Walter kept away from any direct dealings with ELMSCO's automotive business contacts; the auto business bored him to death, and he had no desire to expose his ignorance about the auto industry either. But in the case of the Musgroves, Walter found it convenient to associate with them. Firstly, Henry Musgrove was easy to befriend with his warm, approachable nature, and it suited Walter's grandiose notions to have an "inferior" friend to boost his ego from time to time. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, Walter could see the potential for a match between Charles Musgrove and Anne.<p>

The Musgroves might not be at quite the level of status he would target for Elizabeth, but even when the girls were small, Walter could already see the potential difficulties in getting Anne, with her mild manners, understated tastes and intellectual bent, to conform to the usual socialite mold. So for Anne, Walter would be satisfied to settle for Charles as a backup choice; the Musgroves were certainly wealthy enough even if they didn't show it. They didn't like the pretentiousness of the country-club set, so they'd chosen to live in a middle-class suburb instead. Charles and Anne had been classmates in private school from kindergarten through junior high, and Anne had spent many afternoons playing at the Musgroves' home after school. That arrangement had suited Anne very well – she'd liked the homey atmosphere at the Musgroves', where Lucy was always baking something or other, much better than the cold, formal feel that Walter contrived at his large, historical mansion.

Charles had been a short, pudgy kid with always-unkempt hair and round metal-rimmed glasses; on top of that, he'd always been something of a mommy's boy, having been an only child until the twins Henrietta and Louisa came into the picture when he was fourteen. He had been the kind of kid everybody liked to make fun of – the bigger boys bullied him, the girls teased him, and the adults liked to pinch his cheeks. Being an easy-going, good-natured kid, mostly he'd just laughed it off. And through it all, Anne had never stopped being kind to him.

On the first day of kindergarten, Charles had promptly burst into tears once his mommy disappeared from the crowd of anxious parents by the window. Upon seeing Charles in distress, Anne had scampered all the way across the classroom to comfort him, ending up bawling in sympathy herself.

During first grade, there had been a period of time when the bigger boys threw Charles' lunch into the mud every day. Afterwards, Anne had always come to Charles to share her lunch with him. And Charles, in gratitude, had told her that he would marry her when they grew up, wrapping a worm around her finger as an engagement ring.

In second grade, Anne had convinced their teacher to put on _An American Tail_ for the school play, and to cast Charles in the lead role as Fievel. Naturally, Anne had played Tanya, and the chemistry evident in their rendition of _Somewhere Out There_ had brought the house down. Every year after that, they had reprised the roles until they outgrew them.

As they grew older, Charles had learned how to look after Anne a little, too. He'd badgered his parents to always keep a set of his old play clothes for Anne, so she could change out of those ridiculously fancy dresses and heels that Walter made his girls wear to school when she was at the Musgroves'. On some afternoons, Charles had brought Anne to join Henry at their Detroit garage, instead of going home. In exchange for Anne's help with his homework, Charles had introduced Anne to the Musgroves' extensive collection of classic and sports cars, which included a 1940s Bugatti, a '50s Cadillac Eldorado with the trademark tail fins, a Mercedes 300SL with the gullwing doors, and a spanking new Porsche 911 Targa, amongst others. At school, Anne had always failed art because she used too many lines and not enough colors; yet by the time they were in fifth grade, Anne could draw a detailed reproduction of just about any car in the Musgrove garage, and add her own original design details to boot. If she hadn't gotten interested in aircraft, Anne would definitely have ended up in the automotive business. After all, the Elliots had started out with gasoline in their blood, and in the current generation, all of it had gone to Anne.

* * *

><p>"Let's watch a movie," Charles suggested. "I know <em>The People vs. Larry Flynt <em>would be right up your alley, but since that isn't out yet, why don't you humor me with _Jerry Maguire_?"

Anne shrugged. She wasn't particularly in the mood for a romantic comedy, but it didn't feel right to brush Charles off when coming to see her was practically the first thing he did for winter break.

"OK, but on one condition. I still haven't properly seen this baby of yours yet." Anne gestured at the Civic, though they both knew very well what she meant. "After the movie, can we go to the garage? It'd be great if you could show me your latest handiwork."

That was how they ended up lying side-by-side on the garage floor, looking up at the undercarriage of the jacked-up car as Charles explained the various modifications he'd made. Over the years, they had done this many times before, and it had all been perfectly innocent. Yet this time, Anne felt that things were different, uneasy. Perhaps it was because they were older now, or perhaps it had something to do with how she was suddenly conscious of just how tight a space they were in. Somehow, it didn't seem quite so innocent anymore, and Anne wasn't sure she liked that feeling.

* * *

><p>High school and college had done Charles plenty of favors; somewhere along the way, he'd shed the pudgy look and become fairly good-looking in a laid-back kind of way. Berkeley suited him well; the relaxed hippie culture appealed to him, and to the Musgroves' consternation, he hadn't cut his hair all semester, so it was long enough to pull back into a stubby ponytail. California being a hotbed for the swing revival of the '90s, Charles had also been fully swept up by the swing and jitterbug craze. It didn't take him long to look up the local swing clubs; by the next time he visited the Elliots, he'd put together a series of swing events to take Anne to over winter break.<p>

Anne was no stranger to dancing; she couldn't possibly be when Walter had deemed it appropriate for each of his girls to have a debutante ball when they reached the age of sixteen. But Anne was starting to find the whole business of partner dancing stressful rather than enjoyable, especially when combined with all the social dynamics of the high school and college dating scene. At eighteen going on nineteen, Anne still wasn't sure if she knew what she wanted in a life partner just yet, and though she knew her thinking was conservative by today's social norms, she wasn't comfortable with getting too intimate with anyone unless she was sure she wanted to be serious about the relationship. Dancing in itself might be simple, but one thing usually led to another and especially where Charles was concerned, she didn't want to start giving him ideas. It could ruin their friendship, perhaps forever, if they entered into a dating relationship before they – _she_, at least – were ready.

All the tension between Charles and Anne came to a head the first time they went for swing together. To start with, Charles was disappointed when Anne asked him to let Mary tag along. After practicing all the swing and Lindy steps with her friends at boarding school, Mary was more than eager to show off her newfound skills. But Charles didn't like the idea of adding a whiny fourteen-year-old to their party at all. This was to be his special time with Anne, and it would be all too short before they both went back to college again.

The event kicked off with a simple dance lesson to orientate everyone to the basic steps of swing and Lindy Hop. Charles led Anne to a corner of the room – _he_ wanted to be the one to show Anne how to swing, so much for the instructor. That left Anne with her hands full between trying to subtly maneuver Charles into following the instructor and paying less attention to _her_, while also getting the feel of the rollicking beat of swing music, which was unlike the more structured classical partner dances she was used to. It was easy enough to do the one-two-rock-step of basic swing, but when it evolved into the complicated Lindy Hop, Anne decided she'd had enough.

"I'm sorry, Charles. I guess I'm just not cut out to do swing. Why don't you dance with Mary for a change? You'll have more fun with a partner who's closer to your level of ability, and I'm sure she's probably tired of sitting at the sidelines."

Talk about Hobson's choice – if it wasn't Mary pouting, then it was Charles, since Mary wanted to dance, period, and Charles wanted to dance _with Anne_. Still, Anne resolutely sat out the rest of the evening. Mary could have her fun, and as for Charles, he'd been doing swing all semester without her, so he should know what to do. To everyone else, the couple on the dance floor was perfect – Charles and Mary had perfect technique, perfect timing and at least as far as their physical movements were concerned, both of them were completely in sync with each other.

_One-two, three-and-four; five-six; seven-and-eight. _Charles and Mary whirled around and around, faster and fancier as the night wore on. It was only Anne who noticed that far from paying full attention to his partner, Charles was taking every opportunity to sneak a glance at her.

For all the subsequent times Charles went for swing that winter, Anne begged out, and Mary was more than happy to take her place instead.

* * *

><p>It was an Elliot family tradition to invite the Musgroves over for Christmas dinner every year. Walter relished the opportunity to showcase his hospitality and the fineness of the Elliot home, while Anne and Mary welcomed the extra warmth and activity that chased away the emptiness, making the Elliot mansion feel more like a real home even if it was only for one day every year.<p>

Every year, they would tuck into a sumptuous spread, then open the presents over dessert. Being the only kids left in the Elliot and Musgrove families now that even Mary considered herself quite grown up, the twins were the first to launch into the pile under the Christmas tree, leaving a colorful trail of torn wrapping paper across the floor. They were at the age when everything had to be pink, frilly and princess-y, so Anne got them pink-and-purple matching ballet tutus, which the little girls insisted on wearing immediately. With Hetty and Lulu happily trotting around smearing chocolate from the log cake into their tulle skirts, it was time for Charles and the Elliot girls to exchange their gifts.

Anne had been apprehensive at first when opening the fat package from Charles, but when she saw the hippie-style fringed leather vest inside, she was delighted.

"Thank you," she breathed. It was the easiest moment she'd had with Charles in the past couple of weeks.

"I'm glad you like it. I wanted to bring a piece of Berkeley to you."

Charles couldn't wait to rip the wrapping paper off the flat, boxy package Anne handed to him. It was the current edition of the NASCAR Playstation game. He clapped Anne on the shoulder in a brotherly gesture.

"Holy cow! I've been waiting for this for ages. Anne, how do you always know exactly what I'm looking for?"

In that moment, things went back to what they'd been before, with the same easy camaraderie they'd had growing up almost as brother and sister over the years. They were Fievel and Tanya again. Anne was relieved – she wasn't sure she was ready to cope with anything more from Charles just yet.


	6. Chapter 6: Anne vs Elliot

**Chapter 6 – Anne vs. Elliot**

When spring semester started, it didn't take long for Frederick to become a regular fixture at Anne's dorm. If anyone asked him, he could come up with any number of excuses for spending most of his time with Anne: they were taking many of the same classes, so there was synergy in doing homework together; their marathon training was a heavy, time-consuming process; and anyway, hanging around in a girls' dorm was all the better for treating himself to some eye candy, right? All those reasons were true, to varying extents. But the real reasons that Frederick conveniently refused to admit, even to himself, were that he enjoyed Anne's company more than anyone else's, and that there were times when he found the constant partying at the frat house too distracting, so he needed someplace else to escape to in order to focus.

Anne's floor mates were pretty quick on the uptake to notice the new addition to their community, and they never let go any opportunity to tease her about it.

"Say, did I just see Hunky Freddy around here again? Anne, I had no idea you knew magic! What kind of spell did you cast, anyway, to turn our humble abode into a hangout for him?"

"Well, Fred's a hot one for sure. Reckon there's any chance he'll ask me out for a date?"

"Nat, don't be daft. Anyone can see he only has eyes for Anne."

"Nonsense. He's just a friend." Anne brushed the whole matter away, even though the others looked skeptical.

Everybody saw them as an item way before they started admitting it; and when Anne and Frederick finally acknowledged they'd somehow graduated from being "just friends" to being something more, they couldn't pinpoint an exact moment or incident when it happened. It could have been many instances, yet it wasn't precisely any one of them.

* * *

><p>It could have been the instance when Frederick stopped denying that whatever he was doing with Anne actually constituted dating.<p>

"Dude." Frederick felt somebody elbowing him. "Since when did you start hooking up with the Elliot bird? Going up-market, huh?"

"Her name is Anne," said Frederick tightly. "And I'd thank you not to talk about _Anne_ like that ever again."

"Hey, why so uptight, man?" Everyone within earshot turned to stare at Frederick as though he'd suddenly sprouted two heads. Such ribbing was commonplace in the frat house, and for the most part everyone took it with good humor, knowing that for the most part, no malice was intended. And if anyone was going to start acting priggish about it, Frederick Wentworth was the last person they expected to do so, cool cat that he was.

Frederick himself didn't know which offended him more – the slightly lewd connotations of the term "hooking up", or the insinuation that he was dating Anne because of her family money. The truth was, he really didn't give a s*** about whether Anne was rich or poor; in fact, he respected Anne all the more after he found out that she was actually putting herself through college.

"Your dad must be really proud of you," he'd said to her one day, with no idea of the minefield he was stepping into.

"Father? I don't think so. Maybe if I was a boy, it'd be different. If I wanted to please him, I should've gone to a women's liberal arts college and come out as the perfect Stepford wife to somebody. In fact, when I told him I wanted to study engineering, he totally flipped out. He said if I wanted to be ambitious _as a woman_, there wasn't any reason why a liberal arts education shouldn't be good enough for me – after all, Hillary Clinton went to Wellesley College and look where she is now.

"And what he totally doesn't get is that it's not even a question of what's good or not good enough – far be it from me to make a value judgment about that. All I know is what _I_ want to do about _my_ future, and I definitely don't want to waste four good years of college doing something I'm not passionate about."

"Well, you're here. So I guess your dad must've finally come round in the end."

"Nope. He never did."

"Then how did you end up getting here?"

"I got a scholarship. You can't possibly see anyone giving financial aid to the daughter of Walter Elliot, could you?"

Frederick ignored the continued jabbing and prodding from the guys in the frat house. He might be offended, but he wouldn't let them have the satisfaction of getting more of a rise out of him than they had already. And it finally dawned on him that no matter what the others said, he couldn't bring himself to say outright that he and Anne were _not_ dating.

* * *

><p>It could have been the point when Frederick and Anne merged seamlessly into each other's groups of friends.<p>

Although she'd never had a thing for basketball in the past, Anne found herself tagging along to Frederick's Saturday games on campus. Sometimes the guys would let Anne join in, ignoring the imbalance in numbers since Anne was too short to give Frederick and his team much of an advantage anyway. But Anne knew all too well that she'd only be in the way if she played, so she never played for very long and spent most of the time at the sidelines.

The one or two occasions when Anne and her girlfriends found time to go downtown to Boston during the weekends, Frederick parked himself in a cafe with a book and nursed a single coffee for the whole afternoon while the girls scrounged in Filene's Basement for bargains. It was a good way of sneaking in some studying without being seen by any of the frat boys. And he'd join the girls and their boyfriends for dinner afterward. Conscious of his efforts to save money, Anne would steer everyone towards diners or Chinese food rather than fine restaurants, and MIT was an egalitarian enough community that nobody really minded; after all, most of them were living on student budgets anyway. To Anne, that was a refreshing change from the preppy, highbrow environment of boarding school.

Most of the time, the girls would call in pizza and eat in on Friday nights, and Frederick would drop in to have his fill. Anne often joked that he was eating them out of house and home, but he knew better than to take it too seriously, especially since he always paid his own way, covering Anne as well while he was at it. He knew the real cue for him to leave was when the girls popped a DVD into the player and started sprawling around in the lounge to watch some soppy chick flick or other.

Of course, college life in Boston wouldn't be complete without going to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox, and that was one of the things the guys and girls could all do together. Every time they went to a game, Frederick would buy just one corn dog, and there was an unspoken understanding that Anne was the only one entitled to take a bite out of it.

* * *

><p>It could have been the time when Frederick declared that his allegiance was to Anne, and not to the Elliots.<p>

The weekend at the start of spring break, Anne let Frederick into her dorm on Friday night after everyone on her floor had left either for home or for their respective vacations, and smuggled him into the girls' bathroom. Their job was to douse the entire bathroom with water, and then scour every single surface thoroughly with disinfectant.

"Can you tell me why we're doing this, again? Don't you guys have a janitor or somebody?"

"It's Mary." This had to be the umpteenth time Anne repeated the story ever since her sisters had first hatched the idea of spending spring break in Cambridge. "Ever since she was little, Mary's always been afraid of catching some bug or other. I guess it's got to do with how insecure she's been, growing up without Mom. Anyways, she won't go into a bathroom unless it's totally spotless. Just one black spot and she'll freak out." Anne gave a resigned sigh. "Well, they're family. And they're coming tomorrow morning, so it's a little late for me to do a Houdini and vanish into thin air."

Elizabeth had been the one to put together the entire scheme in the first place, back when they'd all been at home for winter break.

"Anne, I never knew you were so sneaky. We all thought you were either stupid or crazy to go to a _monastery_ like MIT, you know. But it looks like _you_ were the one who had the best ideas after all. How could you be so selfish? You totally _have_ to introduce us to all the geeks you met over there – you can't possibly keep them all to yourself! Who knows when they'll make it rich – look at Bill Gates! _I_ know – I'm going to visit you for spring break. After all, you won't have any other plans, so there won't be any problem for you to play host to your dear sis, right?"

"If you're going, I want to go too," Mary had whined. "You always have all the fun, and nobody ever remembers about _me_. Don't give me that look, Liz. You always say I'm too ugly to ever get a boyfriend, but you just wait and see!"

That was when Anne knew all her hopes of doing anything exciting for spring break had been dashed to pieces. She'd have no choice but to play host to not just one, but two sisters for an entire week.

Preparing for Elizabeth and Mary's arrival was the business of an entire night, for after the bathroom was done there were also Anne's dorm room and the common lounge on the floor to tackle. Anne's roommate Lorin Smith had kindly agreed to let Anne borrow her bed while she was away for the week, so Anne busied herself giving the bed frames the once-over with furniture polish and dressing the twin beds with hotel-grade linens sent especially from home, while Frederick pumped air into a blow-up mattress on the floor.

"Won't you join us, like maybe for dinner tomorrow night or something?" Anne hoped that having Frederick around, for some of the time at least, would provide some variety and relief for her. The prospect of spending a solid week with nobody but her sisters for company was extremely daunting.

"Thanks, but no thanks. Entertaining Elliots has never been my cup of tea, so I'll give it a pass."

"Ouch. Have you forgotten my last name or something?" Anne knew exactly what he meant, but she deliberately put on her best crestfallen look to provoke him into apologizing.

"You're different. I think of you as Anne, not an Elliot. Sorry, OK?" He teasingly gave her a light peck on the tip of her nose and she wrinkled it in mock disgust.

After they'd worked into the wee hours of Friday night cleaning up the dorm, after Anne had gone all the way to Boston Logan Airport to receive her sisters in a limo taxi, and after she'd given them a thorough walk-through of the MIT and Harvard campuses, as well as driving them all around Cambridge, it was Elizabeth and Mary who did the Houdini act. By Sunday night, they'd checked into a five-star hotel in downtown Boston, leaving Anne alone in the dressed-up dorm room.

Frederick came by as soon as he saw Anne's email telling him that her sisters had left.

"What happened?"

"Nothing. Too many things. Depends on who you ask. Liz can't sleep on any bed smaller than a queen size, Mary can't stand the smell of the bathroom, both of them want a bathtub and won't use the shower stalls. And of course, it's easier for them to start building up their summer wardrobe at Filene's than to pick up the next tech billionaire by hanging around Harvard and MIT during spring break."

"Well, at least you have your bed back." Frederick started squishing the air out of the blow-up mattress. Anne still looked so forlorn that he couldn't resist giving her a hug. "And you still have me."

"Yeah," Anne hugged back, tighter than she realized. "I have you."

* * *

><p>Or to Anne at least, it could have been the moment when she figured out the Lindy Hop without any real need for an instructor.<p>

It was one of those times when everyone had a lot of pent-up energy after a whole week of being cooped up studying for midterms. With Anne's 19th birthday coming up the following week, they'd all decided to have an early celebration over the weekend, with a trip downtown for dinner followed by a swing party.

Anne wasn't sure where Frederick got his swing skills from, since this was the first time they'd ever gone dancing together – they'd simply had too many other things to do. Most likely, he'd picked it up at the frat house. But any jealousy Anne felt towards whichever girls Frederick might have danced with before was relatively short-lived, since that night they were so naturally paired that nobody else dared to even try supplanting Anne as his partner.

Before long, they were actually doing the Lindy Hop. Anne knew her footwork was probably garbage, but it didn't matter anymore. All she cared about was the thrill of whirling around and around, with no one but Frederick in her consciousness.


	7. Chapter 7: Pacts and Persuasion

**Chapter 7 – Pacts and Persuasion**

As summer drew near, Frederick was looking forward to the experience of flying. He'd decided that instead of going to summer school, he would head down to Texas to get his private pilot license. To earn the money to pay for his flight lessons, he was planning to get himself a part-time gig pumping aviation fuel for private planes. It wasn't just that he was hungry for the experience of getting airborne; he also wanted to maximize his chances of getting a pilot slot, and clocking in some flying hours of his own would be helpful.

Though they knew it was a childish practice, Anne and Frederick ended up making all kinds of pacts before they parted for the summer. They promised to send each other email every day; to keep up with their respective running distances; for Frederick to bring Anne's pig, now reduced to a sagging frame of foam-board, up with him when he did his first solo; and so on.

"Do you want to spit in your hand and shake on it?" Anne grinned.

"Naw. Didn't you outgrow all that by fourth grade already?"

When Anne saw Frederick off for the summer, he was sporting a new bumper sticker on his creaky rust-brown '86 Pontiac, a gift from her. It read: "I love the smell of jet fuel in the morning."

* * *

><p>Charles was all too eager to welcome Anne home when she finished summer school in August. They'd have even less time together than during winter break, for the fall semester would be starting in less than three weeks. There was something he wanted to say to her, and he'd been gathering up his courage for months on end to bring up the subject. It proved unfortunate, though, that he chose his own front porch as the place to bring it up.<p>

"Say, Anne, um, do you … have you ever thought it possible that we could be more than friends?"

"Charles, I'm sorry. We'll always be the best of friends. In fact you're the best brother I could ever have. To my mind, we'll always be Fievel and Tanya. But that's the thing, you see – there's somebody out there, someone whom I love, _not_ as a brother. Charles… I don't know how to say this, but – I already have a boyfriend." She could barely get out the last few words, and it was almost like a whisper when she said it.

This was the last thing that Charles had expected to hear. After all, hadn't he been the guy who'd been closest to her up until they went to college? Still, he had to fashion some kind of a response for civility's sake, lame though it might be.

"Who… who is he?" Charles knew he probably looked and sounded as deflated as he felt.

"Um… someone I met in college." Anne rarely mumbled, but this was one of the most uneasy conversations she'd ever had, especially with Charles.

Their awkward silence was broken by two small figures shooting out from under the porch, and running right past them into the house. They could hear Louisa's voice yelling, "Mommy! Mommy! Guess what? Anne has a _boyfriend_!"

"Well, isn't that sweet." Lucy Musgrove appeared in the doorway. "Anne, dear, why don't you tell us about him? And are we going to have the honour of seeing him soon?"

Before Anne could reply, the twins, who had been trailing behind their mother, cut in with their sing-song voices, "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a golden carriage!"

It couldn't have been a worse time for that interruption, though Anne reminded herself that Mrs. Musgrove probably had no idea of the situation she'd just walked in on, and that the twins were probably too young to fully understand the conversation they'd been eavesdropping on.

"I – I'm sorry, but maybe it'd be better to talk about this some other day. You see, I… I haven't told my family about him yet. And - no, he isn't in town. He's got a summer job in Texas, pumping aviation fuel. It's to pay for his flight school."

For the longest time, nobody said anything. Mrs. Musgrove could sense that definitely, there was more to the situation than met the eye, for Anne was as white as a sheet and Charles just slouched there, speechless, with the most pitiful hangdog expression on his face.

Finally, Anne stood and made to leave. She was relieved that this time, she'd come from somewhere else and driven there by herself, rather than the usual practice of Charles picking her up from her home. At least that spared Charles from the awkwardness of having to see her home, after all that had transpired between them that day.

* * *

><p>"What a joke, Anne! I never pegged you for playing such a brilliant prank - imagine, <em>you<em> having a fling with some guy working in a _gas station_? That's a hoot if there ever was one!"

There had never been any point in explaining or reasoning as far as Elizabeth was concerned, and Anne knew that now was definitely not the time to start. And unlike all those past times when she'd lost it at Elizabeth, she now had the maturity to act on her knowledge that walking away was the only way to get out of such situations with her head held high. It was lucky that Mary was spending that summer at a school friend's summer house in Martha's Vineyard; at least she had only one sister at home to contend with her over the issue.

"It's not like that, and you know it. In any case, I'm not going to discuss the situation with you any further."

"Anne! Whatever happened to your sense of -"

By the time Elizabeth found her tongue to come back with her standard retort, she found that Anne had already left the room and she was talking to thin air.

* * *

><p>"Anne." Walter hated giving fatherly lectures, or in general, dealing with any kind of disciplinary matters pertaining to the girls. So when he summoned her to his study, Anne knew it had to be serious.<p>

"It has been brought to my attention that you have been flirting around with some young punk working in a gas station. Is this true?"

"No, Father." Anne hesitated. "I mean, yes, I am seeing somebody. But it isn't like that. He's in my year at MIT, and also planning to major in aerospace studies. And he's an ROTC scholar."

"I see. And what is this young man doing for the summer?"

"He's going to flight school in Texas, so he can clock up more flying hours to improve his chances of becoming a military pilot."

"Then what is this whole business about him pumping gas? Can you possibly offer any explanation for the rumor that's going around?"

"Well, Frederick _is_ pumping gas - but... but it's not what Liz thinks it is. He's working at an FBO* over the summer. And yes, his job is to refuel private planes. It's to pay for his flying lessons."

"_Frederick_, is it now?" Walter fixed Anne with a long, hard stare full of disgust and derision. "Well, well. I hope I do not need to remind you again of your duty as a member of the Elliot family. If you must have your fun, see to it that you don't ever disgrace the Elliot name. If you get pregnant, you're out. And I don't want to hear any more rumors. You are going to end it, and end it quietly. I don't want to hear a single word about it from anyone. Is that clear?"

"Yessir." Anne just wanted to end the entire conversation, though she had no intention at all of doing what he said.

* * *

><p>"Anne, child. Tell me about your young man."<p>

If there was anyone in her family that Anne thought of as _safe_, it would have to be Grandma Stevenson. Ever since their mother had died in childbirth when Mary was born, Grandma had been just like a mother to the Elliot girls. Grandma lived in a smaller house near the Elliots' home in Grosse Pointe, and when the girls were growing up, Grandma had been the one who'd dropped them off and picked them up from school; fussed over them whenever they were ill; blown over scraped knees; and oohed and aahed at their little art projects and the A's that Anne had scored in school. And Grandma was the only person in the family who had a soft spot for Anne, because Anne was the one who reminded her most of her late daughter. To Grandma, Anne was like Elizabeth Elliot nee Stevenson reborn; and she loved Anne most because of it.

"Well, where do I start? His name, I guess. His name is Frederick Wentworth. And he's in my year at MIT, and he's really smart. In any math course, he beats me hands down, and he's been giving me a good run for my money in design and mechanics class. We started out as rivals, and then we were friends - and then, well, Frederick's the only guy out there who likes me for being _me_, you know? So among all the guys who've asked me out, well, he's the only one I ever really wanted to be with."

"And what about dear Charles, then?"

"Charles? How did you know?"

"Mrs. Musgrove had a word with me about it when she dropped by day before yesterday. Poor boy, he's really upset about the whole thing. Anne, are you sure you won't reconsider?"

Although Anne felt sorry for Charles, now that she knew just how cut up he was about the whole thing, she couldn't help also feeling a little irritated with him for telling his mother about it. After all, nothing had ever started between them, and if he hadn't told, the matter would have remained strictly between the two of them without anybody else having to know.

"Grandma, you know I've always thought of Charles as a brother. And I don't know - it wouldn't be fair to him for us to get together, and then for me - or for him - to find out that actually we wanted something else, or someone else. We were still young, I guess. And besides, he didn't actually ask me to be his girlfriend until now, and - and I'm already with Frederick."

"Well, you're still young yet. And you still have your whole future ahead of you. There's no guarantee that things won't change in a year, or in a few years. It won't be long before you have to start thinking about how you'll be carrying on the Elliot legacy. And no matter what anyone else says, you must believe in yourself that you can do the Elliot name proud.

"This young man, is he financially stable? I hear he's been taking on a summer job to finance his flying lessons?"

"Yes. That's true. And I don't think that's anything to be ashamed of. After all, he's earning an honest living, and not all of us were fortunate enough to be born with the resources to chase our dreams. In fact, I admire him all the more because he hasn't got anything handed to him on a platter - no parents, no family wealth, nothing. Everything he's got so far has been earned through his own hard work, and that's really an achievement. Not many people have that kind of independence, especially when they're just 19 years old. Every day, I look at Frederick and I think about how blessed I am to not have those kinds of worries - that even if I _am_ funding my own studies, at least I have the security of a home, a family and a business to fall back on."

"But have you thought about what will happen to you after college? Someday you'll graduate, and you'll have to make a decision about your future. You've had so many advantages when you were growing up, Anne, and it'd be a waste to throw all of that away. Everything we've got today is only possible because of the hard work your grandfather, and your great-grandfather before that, put in to build up ELMSCO. So you have a duty to come back, and to carry ELMSCO on for the next generation. And the reason why I never said a word about you studying engineering is exactly because you're the only one of your generation with the potential to really make a difference to ELMSCO. You're intelligent, capable and responsible.

"I'm not questioning your young man's character, or honor, or whatever you young people want to call it these days. Of course, now it's easy for you to say, you're still in school and being together is easy for you when both of you are living on campus. But after graduation, can it still be the same? If you come back to ELMSCO, can your father accept Frederick? Once you marry someone, you marry their family – and this applies to Frederick as well as to you. So you also have to ask yourself if Frederick can accept your father – you know already how your father feels about him.

"And if you don't come back to ELMSCO, what kind of a life can Frederick provide for you? Whatever standard of living he can achieve, especially in the beginning, will be a far cry from everything you have been used to here. Think about that – and whether you can accept it."

All this was totally new to Anne – marriage had been far from her thoughts, even after she'd started officially going out with Frederick. At their age, weren't they entitled to live in the present, after all? Still, none of what Grandma said, legitimate though it might be, could change Anne's mind about sticking with Frederick. She knew that she had never been more in her element than after she went to MIT and met Frederick, and no number of obstacles they might face in getting started with adult life would change the fact that it was all worthwhile.

"I have every faith in Frederick. He's driven enough to give himself a realistic shot at achieving his goals, and as for his career, the Air Force will take care of that. He's on an ROTC scholarship, after all."

"Then you have even more to think about. In the military, he could be posted somewhere that you can't go to, and then you'll have to cope with the household, even children maybe, all on your own. And you can't be sure if he'll ever come back. That also means for sure that you can't join ELMSCO and be with him at the same time.

"I'm not asking you to make a decision now. But you're still young, and it's wise to keep your options open. Don't rush to tie yourself down, because when you're older, more options will come your way. So all I'm asking you to do is to keep an open mind so you can take advantage of those options when they come up. You're right about one thing – you grew up very lucky indeed. Don't negate all the advantages you grew up with – it wouldn't be worth it."

* * *

><p>By the time she was due to return to school, Anne was thankful she'd driven her car home from Cambridge instead of flying back. It wasn't just about saving money – the drive, which she spaced out over two days, allowed her to escape all the lecturing, chiding and prodding a little earlier.<p>

Besides, Anne was desperate to go back to Frederick. She'd never felt this alone in her life before – in the past, Grandma had always been on her side, but now it seemed that nobody at home was at all in favor of her relationship with Frederick, not even Grandma. Anne now knew that if she and Frederick were to have a future together, she'd have to be financially independent from Walter, and she'd have to start thinking about how she could strike out on her own after graduation. It was a new thought, but one that she doggedly clung to. All of it would be worthwhile in the end, she was sure.

And while making that resolution to become independent of her family, Anne resolutely kept silent about Frederick. She'd make sure that until they secured their future together, her family members would never hear the name of Frederick Wentworth again. That way, they couldn't pour more cold water on her, or on them.

* * *

><p>*An FBO (Fixed Base Operator) is a facility catering to the needs of private aircraft. Typically, it provides space to park, service, and re-fuel the aircraft, as well as lounge and conference facilities for the passengers and private aviators.<p> 


	8. Chapter 8: Unladen, Empty, Hungry

**Chapter 8 – Unladen, Empty, Hungry**

_Fall 1997 – Spring 1999_

Summer and sophomore year changed Anne and Frederick in ways they couldn't have imagined before. They both returned from the summer with a new level of gravitas; Frederick because he felt more adult than ever now that he had his private pilot license, and Anne because she felt a new kind of hunger with her recent resolution to carve a path for herself outside the Elliot family.

To add to their adult feeling, sophomore year was when both of them moved to their respective off-campus apartments. Even before Walter's threat about Anne getting pregnant, she already knew that the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy would be pretty dire for both of them; consequently, she insisted on not living with Frederick, and he respected her too much to argue on that point. So, Frederick moved in with his buddies Thomas Harville and James Benwick, while Anne lived with her freshman roommate Lorin Smith, as well as Jenna Anderson and Natalie White from their floor. For Frederick, it was actually a relief to be able to move out of the frat house, because his ROTC commitments were piling up - for one, he had to study for extra tests to qualify for the officer course in junior year, as well as to compete for pilot slots. Anne was eager to help Frederick by offering him the type of home support he'd missed out on in his teen years - she taught herself how to cook, and made extra portions for him so he wouldn't have to worry about meals. She offered to do his laundry and housework, even ironing his uniforms, but he flatly refused.

"A man needs his dignity," he protested.

Slowly, the carefree aura that had pervaded their freshman year faded somewhat over the course of their sophomore and junior years. The weekend pick-up basketball games and teen flick movie nights gave way to more serious pursuits as they started spending increasing amounts of time in the lab and the machine shop. But in spite of their mounting workload, they still seized every opportunity to enjoy and experience life.

The first time Anne went to a military ball as Frederick's date was also the first time he saw her in something that wasn't running gear, wool, canvas, leather, cotton or denim. Clad in a floor-length ivory cocktail dress, simple yet elegant in its design, Anne looked beautiful in her own unique way. Previously, Anne would never have thought herself pretty by any stretch of the imagination - after all, she didn't have the kind of leggy, buxom model-looks that Elizabeth had. But when she stood in front of the mirror that evening, she realized that looking good wasn't an all-or-nothing game. That if she took away Elizabeth as a yardstick, she could actually appreciate her own finer points - the fact that even if she was petite, her figure was perfectly proportioned; and that her features were attractive in an understated but refined kind of way. She might not be the type of girl who turned heads the moment she stepped into a club or a bar; but she could be the kind of girl that people would imagine dancing the role of a fairy queen in the ballet, when she was decked out as she was that night. In the way they complemented each other perfectly - Frederick being the picture of energy and vigor, set against Anne's gentle but dignified bearing - there were already hints of the couple they could become in the future: the dashing, daring military officer accompanied by his regal, queenly wife. Whenever Frederick thought of that image, he puffed up with pride; superficial though it may be, it suited him all the more that they looked so good together.

Spring break was an opportunity for them to explore those places off the beaten track that they wouldn't ever be able to entice their families to visit. Of course, some of the places on their wish-lists, like Europe, were out of the question from a cost point of view; but with a little creativity and the right sense of adventure, they could still put together trips which gave them memories for a lifetime. In sophomore year, they hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail with their friends simply because it was exciting yet nearby; in junior year, they decided to venture a little further and fly budget to LA, then drive to Las Vegas, deliberately making a detour to pass by the aircraft boneyards in the Mojave Desert. The idea of going to Vegas came out of Frederick reaching his 21st birthday; he celebrated his coming-of-age by gambling away $20 just because he could, then walking off because he didn't think it made sense to lose any more money like that. There were so many things they wanted to do, ranging from small-scale adventures like visiting the New England countryside towns to larger-scale ideas like mountain biking down the slickrock trails of Moab, and never enough time or money to do them all.

No matter how much time they spent together, Frederick never ceased to be intrigued by the many faces of Anne Elliot - the heavenly fairy queen at the military balls; the intensely focused competitor when she ran; the creative mastermind giving a wacky touch to all their design projects; and the free spirit who enjoyed nature because she was an artist at heart - Frederick could hardly believe that all these personae actually belonged to the same girl. She was sassy, spunky, sometimes a smartass; yet sweet, considerate, always graceful and tactful; full of passion and the love of life. She broadened his horizons more than he could ever imagine by challenging him, yet complementing him at the same time - she thought of ideas he'd never have come up with on his own, while also being behind him all the way in his quest to achieve his goals.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, Anne was also fighting her own battle. After spending her formative years steeped in the Elliot lifestyle, coming to MIT was like stepping into a whole new world, whose value system matched hers more than the Elliot way ever had. In this world, people were judged by their passion and ability, rather than by their family pedigree or wealth; people were challenged to push boundaries, often achieving more than they ever thought they could, rather than being hemmed in by endless outdated traditions. Having had a taste of this world, she wanted to spend the rest of her life this way, and she had to start thinking about her own future beyond college to make it happen.<p>

More than once, Anne found herself wishing that she had the single-mindedness of Frederick, who'd homed in on his profession for life when he was sixteen and never looked back. She'd majored in aerospace engineering out of a vague curiosity to learn about the thinking behind how different aircraft were designed, but when she delved deeper into dissecting the industry, she found that there was no end to the hierarchy of systems and sub-systems that make up an aircraft, and that whatever she ended up doing as an engineer, she'd probably be working on only a tiny part of whichever system it was. It motivated her to think of the big picture - working on designing a minute part was boring, until she was able to place how it influenced the overall performance of the aircraft it was intended for. That led her towards the idea of getting a job with an airframe manufacturer.

Getting summer internships served double duty for Anne - not only did the stints help to improve her career prospects, they also minimized her time in the Elliot world to just a fortnight-long sliver of summer in August. She went to Lockheed after sophomore year, and to Boeing after junior year; and at the end of that summer, she was so full of the Boeing 747X and Sonic Cruiser* concepts that she finally knew exactly where she wanted to go after graduation, if only they would have her.

Much as they would have wanted to spend whatever time they could together, Anne and Frederick came to accept that their summers apart were a necessary step towards achieving their dreams. After all, every time they could fall back on the secure knowledge that they'd enjoy their respective new challenges for the summer so much that it wouldn't seem long before fall came around, and then they'd become a central part of each other's lives again.

* * *

><p>Whatever time Anne spent in the Elliot world became more bearable now that it was relatively short, and that the matter of Anne's relationship with Frederick had been conveniently forgotten by everyone in the Elliot household. Anne took care to say absolutely nothing about Frederick to anyone at home - even if it was a lie by omission, it was convenient to let everyone fancy that it had been a passing fling that was now not worth mentioning.<p>

By the summer after sophomore year, Charles had gotten over Anne, too. It wasn't in his nature to brood about things for too long; he went back to Berkeley and his swing dancing, and soon came to terms with the reality that he and Anne couldn't possibly have worked out, even if Anne had been single. Even as children, Anne had always been the one with the ideas; she was more driven, more curious, more adventurous at heart; and over time, it became clear that his life and Anne's were taking completely different directions. He'd never thought of doing anything after college except to go home and work in the family business; it was in his nature to do whatever was comfortable. He liked having company, and though he wanted to settle down someday but not just yet, it would have given him a sense of security to think himself attached to a girl from home, someone he'd grown up with. Based on their past, Anne had seemed like the natural candidate. Yet just one year on, it was clear from the excitement Anne showed about her internships and her new life in aviation that she wasn't ever likely to be satisfied with confining her life to the Musgrove home and garage, even though she said very little about exactly what she planned to do after college.

Anne never regretted her choice of Frederick over Charles. Close as she and Charles had been in childhood, Charles didn't inspire her the way Frederick did. There was something magnetic about Frederick's hunger, energy and drive that made everything she did just a little bit more exciting when she did it with him; it was as though some of his energy rubbed off on her as well. Even though they'd been long aware of their different family circumstances and the Elliots' disapproval of their relationship, all that made no difference to them; they'd met as equals, and in their life at MIT, the only life that mattered to them now, they always were equals. The new life Anne had built for herself since she'd gone to MIT was inextricably linked with Frederick, and that was the way she wanted it to be forever.

* * *

><p>Training for the Boston Marathon wasn't easy, because of the strict qualifying times. Just because they could run 12 miles in under two hours didn't mean that they'd be able to run 26 miles in four hours; and even if they could meet the four-hour marathon mark, a respectable standard from an amateur standpoint, they still had to shave off a considerable amount of time from that performance to meet the bar for the Boston Marathon, which was set at 3 hours 10 minutes for men, and 3 hours 40 minutes for women.<p>

Soon enough, Anne and Frederick realized that they couldn't possibly do exactly the same runs together and both qualify. They worked out a system where Frederick either gave Anne a head start or covered more distance in the same time; but even though they didn't start together, they always made it a point to finish together. It didn't take Frederick long to see why Anne was always so focused when she ran; the discipline they needed in monitoring their split timings was critical when they had such specific milestones to meet.

In October of junior year, they ran the Bay State Marathon as a qualifying event for Boston. The atmosphere was electrifying - an entire legion of people milling around in the morning light, the loudspeakers bellowing announcements, peppy music streaming from the PA system - even at the crack of dawn, the whole world was more than alive, it was raring to go. For Frederick, this being the first road race of this scale he'd attended, it was easy to get caught up in the excitement of the moment. He'd planned to follow the measured pace of the 3:10 pacer, but with all the energy he soaked up, what was the point of restraining himself when he felt that he could do more? Letting himself flow with nature, he edged past the pacer and surged ahead. The feeling was exhilarating.

10 miles later, Frederick was lost. He hadn't kept track of his split times, having simply gone with the flow at every point in the race up until then. To him, he'd been coasting along, but he had totally no idea of the pace that he was running at. It wasn't until Anne, who had been following the 3:20 pacer, picked him up that he realized he'd been so distracted, he hadn't noticed when he let 3:10 slip past him somewhere along the way.

Anne did just the same thing she'd done on that long-ago first run by the Charles River - she upped her pace bit by bit, and Frederick didn't need words to understand that he was expected to follow her. Mile by mile, Anne steadily paced them to shave off more than one minute per mile from their previous pace, until Frederick was reunited with 3:10, with 6 miles left to go.

Since there was no 3:30 pacer, the strategy Anne had originally planned for herself was to follow 3:20 at the start, and then allow herself to fade back a little about 18 or 19 miles into the race, knowing she'd still make the cut as long as she didn't see the 3:40 pacer getting ahead of her. Getting Frederick back to 3:10 took too much out of her for that to work, though, and she just had to take it easy to recover, even if it was just for a little while. That little while proved to be a little too long - she was still chugging along at a too leisurely pace when she saw the 3:40 pacer pass her. She tried to pick up her pace to follow, but she was always just that little bit behind. Eventually, she crossed the finish line at 3:42 - so near, yet not enough to make the cut when there was virtually no wiggle room allowed.

"You were close." Frederick tried to offer some comfort; he wished he could do more, since it was because she was helping him that she'd failed to make the cut. "There'll be other qualifying marathons you can run. Since I've qualified already, I can pace you the next time."

"I doubt it. The Boston Marathon fills up within days of the 18-month timeline for qualifying. Even if I did run again and clock a new time, it'd probably not be in time to qualify for Boston in senior year. But that's OK - I guess I don't have to do everything on my bucket list before graduation. So what even if it's after college? We'll still be young, and there'll still be plenty of time to make our dreams come true."

* * *

><p>* The 747-X is now the 747-800, and close to coming into service first as a cargo aircraft before passenger versions come into service. The Sonic Cruiser was a concept that Boeing had in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before it evolved into what is today the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.<p> 


	9. Chapter 9: TriStar

**Chapter 9 – TriStar**

_Fall 1999 – Spring 2000_

"Fred. Did you know the idea of the superjumbo came way before the A3XX*? I'm amazed, but it says here that Douglas came up with the concept almost 35 years ago as a possible design for the DC-10." Anne looked up from _Destination Disaster_, one of the supplementary texts they had that semester for failure analysis class.

"It's so strange, almost like they could predict the future. Look, they even came up with the idea of having stuff like private suites, nurseries and dining rooms in there. It reminds me of that A3XX picture I saw in the newspapers a few years ago - you know, the idea they had of putting shops and lounges and kids' play areas and even bowling alleys in the plane, so people could walk around and keep themselves busy while they were flying.

"Say, what d'you think it'd have been like if Douglas _had _been successful in designing the DC-10 as a superjumbo all those years ago? With three engines? Maybe we should do that for our project - what do you think?"

For senior year aircraft design class, they had to come up with a "paper airplane" - a set of specifications, such as calculating the engine size and thrust; the dimensions of the wings and tailfin; the size of the fuselage**; and the interior configuration of the aircraft, arranging seats, galleys and lavatories - to fit one of three possible design concepts. At the end of the class, they'd make a physical paper airplane with the dimensions they'd created, and the course would end off with yet another launch-fest. As with all the projects that they had to do in pairs, Anne and Frederick chose to partner each other, even though they weren't fully in agreement about which concept to choose for this one.

"Don't be daft, Anne. There's no way that thing could fly. Can you imagine how huge the engines would have to be? That engine at the rear would eat up your entire tailfin." Frederick flipped the book. Normally he thought most of her ideas were cute, but this one was so way out, and he never minced words, not even with Anne. By now, she was used to that. "And it says here the concept was based on a four-engine aircraft anyway. There's a reason why all the new aircraft have either two or four engines - you know that as well as me. So why waste time re-inventing the wheel when it means we'll end up tanking our project anyway? Besides, I gave you your way about the whole superjumbo thing - if it was all up to me, I'd have chosen to do the supersonic concept. Anything flying below Mach 1 is too boring."

"What's boring is the way all the new aircraft look almost exactly the same. It's as if nobody had any imagination anymore. I always liked those old trijet designs, like the 727 and the Lockheed TriStar. The way they design aircraft nowadays, it's like the total concept of aesthetics has gone the way of the dinosaur. It's sad. So before I actually go out there and have to work on real aircraft that look like they've been stamped out by a cookie cutter, I want to create an aircraft in the way I'd like to do it. Something with a bit of nostalgia, a bit of art, and a bit of the romance from the days when flying was a novelty. Even if it means doing double work, I don't mind doing two concepts – one your way, with the four engines, which will be everybody else's way anyways; and another one to honor the time when rolling out every new aircraft was like gambling; back when they didn't test and simulate everything until it was foolproof before it rolled out of the hangar and took to the air. And I know you don't have the time for that kind of extra work, so I really don't mind if you don't help me on the second concept. I'll just do it on my own."

Doing two designs instead of just one did indeed generate a lot more work, and Anne found herself pulling many all-nighters to work on her DC-10 superjumbo concept while trying to also pull her weight for the A3XX-based one she was jointly doing with Frederick. But even though she'd told Frederick that he didn't need to help out, he ended up helping indirectly. He still didn't agree with the idea; the years of struggling for survival left him with a hard sense of practicality, so he didn't approve when airy-fairy ideas stood in the way of achieving real-life deliverables. He knew, though, that this was something Anne felt she _had_ to do, so he supported her in whatever way he could. Despite his extra workload from ROTC, he quietly took on more for their other joint assignments to pick up the slack, accompanying Anne on the all-nighters they pulled in her apartment without any complaint.

When the two-course aircraft design series wrapped up at the end of senior year, they had two paper planes: the standard one that, like all their classmates' designs, converged to roughly the same design as the A3XX, which was at the time still a paper airplane itself anyway; and Anne's redesign of the DC-10 trijet as a superjumbo. To balance off the heavy empennage***, Anne had to add more weight into the front of the aircraft, making the entire plane larger than life. Just like the A3XX concept, it had two full decks; but the difference was that with all the extra space, she could draw a layout with all kinds of facilities in the lower deck as if the airplane was an ocean liner – with a café, a souvenir shop, a bar, a children's playroom, a karaoke room, and so on. It was technically a stretch, probably a safety hazard if it ever were to be built, and definitely not commercially viable. But it showed beyond doubt the closet artist that lived in Anne Elliot the engineer.

* * *

><p>In April of senior year, Frederick ran the Boston Marathon. Barely meeting the qualifying time of 3:10 was already a challenge for him, so the idea of breaking further ground was not really on his mind, what with all the other priorities that had consumed him in the run-up to the race. The knowledge that he had already secured his pilot slot and was well on the way to graduation and being commissioned as an officer, though, was a load off his mind. With the race of surviving college almost done, he could now afford to be more motivated than he'd originally expected going into this other race.<p>

Anne was there to cheer him on from the sidelines; in fact, Anne's role was much more than to just cheer him on. They'd driven along the course to identify the points where Anne would meet him, and devised a set of hand signs to communicate to him whether he was on track, ahead, or behind his target split times. The idea was that he had to either match, or if he could, improve upon his 3:09 qualifying time.

Frederick crossed the line in 3:05, a new personal best for him. This was the one dream Anne had carried into college without being able to fulfill within the four years there. And for Frederick, the smug satisfaction he got from breaking his own record, though still a major factor, was no match for the consolation he derived from having fulfilled the dream for her, on her behalf.

* * *

><p>With graduation coming up, the thought of the time when he would not be able to see Anne every day weighed heavily on Frederick. It wouldn't be long before their life at MIT would become a thing of the past, and he'd have to ship off to a base in Texas to start his pilot training. Determined to be self-supporting, Anne had been putting heart and soul into her job search throughout senior year, and she'd finally gotten her big coup also with Boeing. So come summer, Anne would be heading to Everett and Frederick to Texas, and this time around there wouldn't be any more fall semesters to bring them back together by default again.<p>

Though Frederick knew they'd still be staying in touch often and regularly, he yearned for a more binding promise than that to keep them together. For almost four years, Anne had been the closest thing to family he had, and he dreaded going back to the solitary lifestyle he'd led before Anne. Soon, he'd have to spend one full year in an Air Force dorm with very limited contact with the outside world before being sent to God knows where, and he wanted, _needed_ a piece of Anne with him to tide him through the tough times that he knew lay ahead.

Many times, the idea of proposing marriage to Anne ran through Frederick's head, yet he tried his best to nip it in the bud every time. He knew that fresh out of college, they wouldn't be as stable as they should be; if they married after a few years of working life, with a basic nest egg of savings under their belt, they'd be better placed to weather whatever opposition the Elliot camp might dish out to them. Also, he wasn't sure if Anne was ready at that point; all this time, she had been so thrilled about her job, about starting her aerospace career, that he didn't want to spoil it all for her right now by making her promise herself to a life on base as a pilot's wife, not just yet. It was a constant battle of head versus heart, and in the end, he wasn't sure if he could let the matter drop without at least saying something about it to Anne.

* * *

><p>In the end, Frederick settled for dropping a hint. The gift was one of the more extravagant ones he'd given Anne to this point, but he wanted to do something special. He'd gotten Lorin to let him in one day while Anne was slaving away on that DC-10 superjumbo design, and surprised her by sneaking up and hugging her from behind.<p>

"Turn around, baby. I've got something for you."

"What's the occasion?" Anne was perplexed – after all, it wasn't her birthday, or Christmas, or anything special.

"Nothing. I just wanted to get you something to remember me by, before we graduate."

The gold-wrapped box sitting on the dining table was definitely too big to have come from any jeweler's shop. Anyone else would have been perplexed, but Anne knew instinctively what it was; she just didn't know _which _one it would be.

Frederick grabbed her hands and stopped her before she lunged towards the package. "Not now," he explained. "I want you to open it tonight, when you're alone, in total privacy."

He'd gotten her a collector's model of the Delta Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, the 1:100 scale kind of model that was mounted on a mahogany stand and had landing gear which could actually move. But what really brought the tears to Anne's eyes was the little card enclosed in the box. It read:

_Dear Anne, _

_Ten years down the road, I don't know where this model is going to be. Maybe it'll be sitting on a bookshelf in the living room, and maybe by then, hopefully, I'll be sharing that living room with you. Or maybe it'll be on your desk in your corner office at Boeing. But no matter which way it is, I just wanted to tell you everything that's on my mind, before we start off on our separate ways in the summer._

_You know, we've been together for years, and still it took me so much time to figure out which aircraft you like best of all. I know you like the 707 because it flew as Air Force One for over 30 years; you like the 747 classic model because you think it's an icon of the majestic and brave age of early commercial flight; and you like the Ilyushin IL-62 because you think it's a wacky idea for anyone to mount four engines on the tail of an aircraft, but it's exactly the same flavor as the wacky and cute ideas you come up with. But at the end of the day, this is my guess, and I bet I'm probably right._

_Your favorite aircraft is the TriStar, because of the way it combines functionality, safety and design in one neat package – it's the kind of aircraft that you would have designed if you had a free hand. It doesn't matter that commercially, the TriStar was no match for the DC-10 – this is an aircraft for purists, and I haven't seen anyone who was more of a purist – not just about aviation, but about life in general – than you. I got it for you in the Delta livery, because of the time you told me about your first ride in the Lockheed TriStar when you were ten, and your father took all of you to Disneyland. I want this to be a symbol of all the nostalgia of your childhood and youth, to carry with you when you grow up, maybe even when we grow old. So you can remember the times when we were young and everything was a new experience, the times when we were together and believed everything was possible._

_And last of all, I hope our time together won't end up being put away just like an item of nostalgia, just to be taken out as a happy memory once a year or something like that. I hope our time together won't be over the minute I get on that plane to San Antonio right after commencement. I hope we'll have many more happy days together to come. _

_I know we don't have any answers now, and I have no idea how we're going to get there. But all I know is that I won't give up hope of getting there when we're ready, and I hope you feel the same way too._

_Love, Frederick_

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note: I'm not s<em>_ure if the aircraft design course is exactly the way they do it at MIT – please excuse my creative license and liberties with this one. It is, though, based on an actual course that I did in college._

*The A3XX was the codename given to the concept that is now the Airbus A380 at the beginning of its development. The name "A380" was only given at the official launch of the program in December 2000, whereas at this point, we're in fall 1999, hence the use of the "A3XX" name still.

**The fuselage is the body of the airplane.

***The empennage is essentially the rear end of the airplane – it consists of the tail fin itself, and also the two stabilizers at each side of the tail.


	10. Chapter 10: Mens et Manus

_Author's Note: To the MIT community, especially the actual class of '00, please excuse me for taking license with my fictional portrayal. I chose to set this story at MIT as a symbol of the passion about aerospace and technology that I wanted to evoke, and no disrespect is intended. _

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 10 – Mens et Manus<strong>

"Of course I feel flattered, but why me as the valedictorian? After all, there's so many of those traditional MIT types – you know, those guys who're prepared to devote their lives to proving Fermat's Last Theorem or finding a solution to global warming by 2030. I'm just a wannabe fighter pilot who _thinks_ he's gonna get a kick out of zipping about at 5G. In my whole life, I wouldn't be able to hold a candle to any of them." It was most unlike Frederick to declare himself not up to a challenge, but he had too much self-knowledge to think of himself as the leading choice to be the first MIT valedictorian of the new millennium either.

"I don't think that's such a mystery. Any 5.0 GPA is as good as any other, isn't it? On that level at least, you're even with them. And then, there are the qualities you've got that they haven't. Like leadership, for example. And charisma." Anne paused, a blush creeping up on her face. "You have way more of a story to share than many of them. And even for those who do have an equally inspiring life story to tell, most of them couldn't tell it the same way you would. You got to where you are today because you have hunger and passion and fire, and you wear it right out there on your sleeve."

"That may be true", Frederick acknowledged, "but still, there's a far cry between me and those baby Einsteins who were winning Olympiads from their highchairs."

"Well, everyone knows very well that MIT has plenty of those sorts of people. I'll bet the reason why they picked you is precisely because you're different. Because you'll show that MIT can attract another type of person - that action-oriented, street smart people can succeed here too. You'll break the stereotype that MIT is only for geeks."

"So what do I do from here?"

"Just tell 'em your story. Tell 'em how the kid who spent all his afternoons at the half-pipe on his skateboard getting as much air as he could, eventually ended up getting highest honors at MIT."

* * *

><p>"Tell 'em." Anne's words never left Frederick's mind as he stepped up on the podium and addressed the crowd, welcoming them to the commencement ceremony. It might be the case that nobody did show-and-tell better than Frederick Wentworth; but still, the magnitude of this ultimate show-and-tell was enough to instill a sense of awe in even the most seasoned student leader. Yet Frederick remained unfazed, as long as he hung onto Anne's words of encouragement.<p>

"By sheer statistics, I shouldn't be standing here today. Not even ten years ago, I was going to the seventh grade at an inner city public school, and if anyone told me that I'd end up graduating from MIT, I'd have dismissed it as the most improbable of fairy tales. After all, the pure odds were against my even finishing high school. Detroit, where I come from, has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country. Back then, I acted out my biggest dreams in the afternoons after school was out, at the half-pipe on my skateboard. It was the feeling of flying that kept me going; whenever I was out there getting air, I imagined I was flying away from all the voices, including my own, telling me that I'd never get off the ground.

"And it was precisely this dream of flying that's got me to where I am right now. I was waiting for a direction in life, only knowing that I loved the rush of adrenaline every time I got airborne. The road leading me to my current career path had very little premeditation, very little calculation, and a lot of passion and intuition. On Sunday, I'll be heading off to Lackland, and I'm looking forward to a lifetime of getting air; only this time, I won't be on a skateboard but hopefully, I'll be in an F-16. It doesn't matter that most of my worldly belongings could fit into a backpack, or that for the next few years or more, the only home I'll know will be just a dormitory room at best; the satisfaction of living my dream, every single day, will be more than enough to make up for all the creature comforts that I'll be leaving behind.

"If you asked any of my classmates today, I'm sure they'll also have a similar story to tell; a story of how a childhood dream became a passion, and how that passion has grown into a larger force that will guide each of us for the rest of our lives. For some of us, our passion will drive us to push new frontiers in technology and innovation; for others, it will lead us to write history in other arenas, be it politics, business, or philanthropy.

"The motto of MIT is _Mens et Manus_ – mind and hand. I think all of us can safely say that college has opened up our minds in ways that we'd never have thought possible. But now, as we step out of college into the real world, at the cusp of a new millennium, I challenge each and every one of us to bring forth what we have learned in mind, and use our hands to make a tangible difference, whether big or small, to the world we live in. As a humble pilot, I will mainly lead with my hand, and for the most part, I may be just a small cog in society at large. But I have every confidence that many of my classmates around me will be playing a much bigger role to shape this new millennium into a distinct era of our own. I am sure this is true for all my peers graduating today, or this month, wherever in this country or in the world: we all believe the future belongs to us.

"For that, we have to thank our parents, and our grandparents before us. Many of the opportunities we have today didn't exist just one or two generations ago. The 20th century was an age of innovation that spawned many of the industries we see around us - automobiles, aerospace, chemicals, electronics. Much of the technology that we take for granted today, and many of the disciplines where we will make our livelihoods in future, are a direct result of all the industrialization that's happened over the past century. And the industrial age of the 20th century is the bedrock of all the exciting new opportunities waiting for us to build our dreams upon as we move into the 21st century – such as new media, clean technology, biotechnology and nanoscience, just to name a few.

"On this day, let us also take some time to thank our families and our friends for all the sacrifices that they've made to get us to where we are. For every personal story you hear from someone who's graduating today, there will always be the story of someone else who believed in us; someone who celebrated our triumphs, and picked us up when we were down. This person, or these people, may be our parents, our siblings, our grandparents, uncles, aunts; they may be our boyfriends, or girlfriends, or the lifelong friends we've made during these unforgettable years in college. Let us thank them for walking with us through this journey; a very special time in our lives when we're old enough to know what we want in life and go after it, yet young enough to believe that anything and everything is possible.

"And now, let's all go out there and graduate. After all, the sky's the limit!"

* * *

><p>After the ceremony was over and all the diplomas were handed out, Frederick made his way back from his seat in front to join Tom, James and the girls, who were already milling and mingling about on the lawn. He'd never seen any other occasion at college with so many family members present - at freshman orientation there'd been a fair number of parents around, but now, the graduates were surrounded by family of all ages and all generations: white-haired grandparents sitting in the shade; little brothers and sisters tossing colorful balloons and cap-and-gowned teddy bears around as they chased each other in the sun; mothers tearfully hugging their sons and daughters while the fathers looked on, visibly puffed up with pride. But even though he was the valedictorian, the man of the day, Frederick had none of these people there to receive him. There was only one person waiting there to greet him as family, and she was Anne Elliot. Yet with the pride and joy radiating from her as she stood there to meet him, it didn't matter so much anymore that his parents, sister and brother weren't there to see him on this occasion. Her support more than compensated for all of them, because Anne wasn't just a fleeting presence on this day; she was a constant presence in his life. Without her, he knew, he might have still achieved his goal at large; but he couldn't have reached this particular pinnacle where he now stood if she hadn't been there, believing in him, challenging him, pushing him all the way. In his heart, when he'd said the thank-you in his speech, he'd been speaking only to her.<p>

That was just one of the many things that Frederick and Anne had in common - his siblings couldn't come, and her family wouldn't come. Grandma Stevenson had considered it, but she'd said that at her age, she was too frail to make the journey alone; and Mary, the only Elliot who'd offered to accompany her, was deemed by Walter to be too young and immature to look after Grandma by herself. The entire clan of Musgroves, of course, was busy celebrating Charles' graduation day at the other end of the country. So at this moment, this day when they were commemorating the greatest achievement of their academic lives, Anne and Frederick had only each other in the place of their respective families to celebrate the moment with. In fact, Frederick thought, they were already closer than family after the way they'd shared their lives throughout their college years, and it would only take one little formality to make it all official.

He made a beeline straight for Anne and swept her up off the ground into his arms, flattening the scroll he still held in his hand.

"Marry me?" he said into her ear. This was exactly the opposite of his original intent to _not_ propose yet; but at the spur of the moment, he was suddenly overcome by the urgency to plug that one tiny gap that stood between him and Anne becoming family for real.

"Yes, of course, yes!" Anne flung her arms around his neck and fairly shrieked the words. They whirled around and around, the colors of summer spinning around them faster and faster, mirroring the kaleidoscope of their emotions.

Finally, they got too dizzy to whirl around anymore, and they flopped down side by side on the grass.

"Well done," Anne said dryly. "MIT people are known for thinking with their heads, but you captured the hearts of many people today. Congratulations, Frederick."

And although she put on the perfect deadpan expression as she said it, her words still made him melt inside anyway.

* * *

><p>Normally, Frederick almost never thought about the fact that he was named after several lines of royalty: most notably, the Prussian kings of yore and the Danish royal line that continues to this day. But on the 2nd of June 2000, he couldn't have been more ecstatic if someone put a crown on his head and sat him on a throne. Within just one day, he'd donned a gown and mortarboard, and pinned the gold bar of a 2nd Lieutenant to his uniform. Yet the crowning glory of that day didn't come with any costume, insignia or accessory. No physical adornments were necessary when a simple verbal promise, uttered with the utmost sincerity, was enough. Over and above the other glories of that day, the very best part of it all was that when he left MIT for good that Sunday, he would indeed be taking a piece of Anne with him after all. He was now officially the fiancé of Anne Elliot.<p> 


	11. Chapter 11: Game Plan

**Chapter 11 – Game Plan**

"Lieutenant Wentworth."

"Yes, ma'am?" Frederick raised his hand in a mock salute.

"You have a grand total of 24 hours to enjoy MIT and Cambridge before you fly off tomorrow. What would you like to do?"

This day was like an intermezzo, a link between their two lives: the college days they were leaving behind, and the adult world that lay ahead of them. They spent the day visiting all their favorite landmarks on campus and in town, ending off with a final run, which eventually trickled into a stroll, along the Charles River.

"I've got it." This time, it was Frederick who had the idea.

"Got what?"

"We'll make it a fait accompli. That way, your folks can't say anything or do anything to stop us. When we go to see them, we'll already be wearing our wedding rings. Let's do it next year, after I graduate from my UPT. That way, we'll both be able to show them. I'll be a full-fledged pilot, and you'll have your job at Boeing. They can pour as much cold water as they want, but it won't make one bit of difference when we're able to stand on our own."

"Why not? That's a pretty good idea. But how about making it two years? Like you said, we've got to show them. And somehow, I feel safer if I had the chance to build up my career somehow first, just to have something to fall back on. I don't want to give Liz, or Father, the last laugh by having them jibe at me for being a housewife, living off you on base. I don't mind that kind of life at all - in fact, nothing could make me happier in the long run. But in the short term, I still need to earn the right to my life with you, by proving my ability to survive on my own without depending on my family or leeching off you. It's very important to me, maybe even more so because no Elliot in this generation has made it outside the family business.

"Tell you what - one year from now, we'll get together and announce our engagement to both our families. Then, we'll have one full year to prepare after that, and we can have a more proper wedding. I want us to be respectably married, not just running off together into the night. If we prove that we're stable and have a good future ahead of us, I'm pretty sure I can talk some of my folks around to supporting us - Grandma, and maybe Mary. Besides, I'm sure your family and our friends will also want to be there with us on our big day."

"Well, I did think a lot before I asked, about whether I was asking too early. Or too late, actually. If I'd asked much earlier, maybe we'd be married by now and I'd be bringing you on base with me."

"Not on your life, you won't. Just concentrate on getting those wings, and as for the other stuff, we'll sort it out when we've established ourselves. We've got our game plan, and that's good enough for now. Deal?"

"Deal. Are you going to suggest we spit in our hands and shake on it?"

"No way, Jose. That stuff's for kids. Since we've graduated now, surely we qualify as adults, don't we?" Besides, Anne thought, they'd been holding hands all this while, and spitting to seal a pact had to be one of the dumbest reasons to let go.

* * *

><p>It wasn't a teary farewell, even though deep down inside, Anne felt that way. For Frederick's sake, she pasted a peppy smile on her face as she waved him off at Boston Logan Airport; after all, she wanted him to start his Air Force career on an upbeat note.<p>

They had time for one last, long embrace after he checked in, and then Anne hollered redundantly, "You'll write and call me, willya?" as Frederick walked through the security gantry.

Frederick hadn't left much behind for Anne to clear on his behalf. Over the past few months, he'd dutifully sorted out what he wanted to throw out or ship to Sophia, so the Pontiac was the only thing remaining for Anne to deal with.

"Just junk it", he'd told Anne. "I won't need a car in the foreseeable future, and by the time I do need one, I'll be earning enough to afford something better. Besides, after you move in with me, you could be my chauffeur."

But when Anne looked at the bumper sticker she'd given him so many years ago, still able to make out the words though it was now streaked and peeling, she just couldn't do it. She'd drop her own car off at the Elliots', and ship the Pontiac to Everett for her to drive there instead.

* * *

><p>Anne made one last visit to the Elliot home before moving to Everett; going back to say goodbye seemed like the respectful thing to do.<p>

When she'd gotten the job at Boeing, she'd already informed Walter and Grandma via e-mail, so none of it was a shock to anybody. Walter took it surprisingly benignly; after all, she was "only Anne" to him; and after so many years of her not being around, he'd grown quite indifferent to her comings and goings, as long as the Elliot reputation remained intact.

"Well, Anne. You'll be representing the Elliot name, so be sure you don't do anything to disgrace us while you're over there. And now that you've graduated, all the more you've got to start paying some attention to your attire and comportment. That hairstyle and dress of yours is completely not befitting of an Elliot woman. You should talk to Elizabeth – I'm sure she'll be happy to give you some advice about that."

Mary was the biggest surprise of all. Anne couldn't imagine that of all the people at home, Mary would actually miss _her_. But fresh out of boarding school and facing the prospect of attending community college from home in the fall, Mary was sorely in need of someone to be her friend.

"Anne, I wish you weren't going to work so far away. It's _lonely_ here, and I _need_ you. Can't you come home soon?"

"You'll be fine, Mary. You've been fine for eight years now while I was at high school and college, haven't you?"

"It's different. At school, I had friends, but now everyone's going to different colleges and it totally sucks, being stuck here at home. You know how much of a pain in the ass Liz can be. Nobody's ever as nice to me as you. And before you went to college, you used to come home all the time for weekends and holidays. But now you're going off to work and you won't be coming back again, _ever_. Without you around, there'll be nobody around here for me to talk to."

"Don't be silly. I'll still come back to visit from time to time. Family will always be family."

So in the end, the family member who disapproved the most of Anne's decision to get a job outside the Elliot family was Grandma.

"Anne, do you remember what I said about coming back to ELMSCO? You young people are always talking about seeing the world, but it'll be just a matter of time before you find out that there's no place like home. You don't know it now, but nobody outside will treat you as well as you'll be treated at ELMSCO, because they won't recognize you for being an Elliot daughter elsewhere, not the way we would."

"Grandma, I don't need anyone to recognize me for being an Elliot daughter. The world works based on ability nowadays, and if I can't prove myself to be capable, I'm perfectly fine with accepting the consequences. That's only fair."

"That's what you think now, you're young and idealistic. A few years down the road, you'll realize what you're giving up. You were born with an advantage in life, and yet you don't want to make use of it. How do you think you can compete with all the others who've made full use of what they've got?"

"I don't need to earn that much money. Just enough to live on will be fine. In fact, I'm happier with a simple lifestyle. That's what I found out these past four years in college. What's more important to me is that I'm doing something I like, something which excites me. All the money and promotions in the world won't give me any satisfaction if I'm bored stiff with my job every day."

"Mark my words, you'll come back to your roots sooner or later. Everyone does."

* * *

><p>Everett didn't disappoint – it was the closest Anne could get to an extension of her college life at MIT. Lorin had gotten a job at Boeing, too, and they were sharing an apartment. As entry-level engineers, their work was comparatively menial, consisting mainly of collecting and analyzing data; but the community more than made up for it. Being able to get to know other young people fresh out of college, all sharing the same interest in aviation and all having the same energy and zest for life, that was the best part of it all. They had parties, they spent weekends exploring Seattle and its environs, and in general, they worked hard but played just as hard.<p>

During her time in Everett, Anne got invited on dates by a fair number of her male colleagues as well; after all, women engineers still weren't all that common, and Anne was actually a very attractive girl in her own right. In the beginning, nobody believed her when she turned them all down on account of her engagement; after all, she never wore any ring. But as they got to know her better, the signs were obvious: the sacred time she kept every Saturday when nobody could touch her because it was when Frederick called; the graduation photo of the two of them which she brought with her everywhere she went; the collection of fighter aircraft posters which adorned the walls of her room; and that Pontiac she insisted on driving despite its completely disreputable condition.

If there had to be a break before the time she and Frederick could get back together again, Anne couldn't have thought of a better way to spend it than her stint at Boeing. She was more than just content; in fact, she was thriving.


	12. Chapter 12: Palliative Care

**Chapter 12 – Palliative Care**

_January 2001, Everett, Washington_

"Stage 4 adenocarcinoma … palliative care recommended …"

It had all started with a simple dentist's visit, apparently. They'd found a growth in Grandma's jaw, and after a battery of medical tests, the report was out. Nobody at home understood any of it; not even Mary with her habit of Googling every little symptom she thought she had. Of course – despite all her hypochondria, Mary was still at the age where she believed herself to be practically immortal, so she'd never be morbid enough to fancy herself to be dying of cancer. How Mary expected Anne to be able to translate the medical-ese was beyond her, but in any case, it was enough that Anne understood the two most important words in the report: "Palliative Care."

For as long as Anne had understood the meaning of life and death, she had dreaded this day. As a little girl, she used to make Grandma promise that she'd live to be 100 years old. Every time she saw senior citizens in wheelchairs on the street, she'd give thanks that Grandma was sprightly, healthy and young for her age. Grandma was the one family member she loved and respected the most, so naturally she wanted to hold on to Grandma for as long as possible. She was determined that it wouldn't be so easy to seal Grandma's fate with just that one report. It couldn't be.

Within days, Anne booked her flight to Detroit, taking three days' vacation from work to go home and investigate the situation. After she'd talked to the doctors at the local hospital where the tests were done, her conclusion was that the situation was not that good, but not totally bad either: the cancer had started in the lung and spread to the jaw, but both tumors were relatively small and the good news was that the cancer was believed to be slow-growing. _Cancer is an ambiguous disease_, Anne told herself._ Nobody can ever tell you how much time you've got left because everyone is different_. And so even though the official prognosis was six months, Anne believed there had to be more hope than that, if only she could wipe out those two fateful words: "Palliative Care." She hated the finality of those words.

There was one certainty, though: Anne knew that she would have to move home. Hope didn't create itself; it had to be built through careful research and action. Even if the others had gotten more involved, Anne would still have wanted to take the lead because of how much Grandma meant to her; but now that it was clear nobody really knew what to do, it was even more imperative that she should take on the main role as a caregiver and advocate for Grandma. Actually at 22, Anne had no more idea of what to do than Walter, or Elizabeth, or Mary; but where she lacked in experience, she more than made up for it in will. The only way to move ahead was to do whatever appeared like a no-brainer, and just build up from there, one step at a time.

* * *

><p>The first no-brainer to Anne was to tender her resignation once she returned to Everett. Boeing didn't have a major operation in Michigan, so even though Anne hadn't figured out whether she'd be able to work or not after she moved home, it was pretty clear that she couldn't stay with Boeing. Anne found it hard to believe that after six short months, she was walking away from her dream of a lifetime to face the nightmare of her lifetime; yet, she supposed, having just those six months of her dream job at Boeing were better than not having had it at all.<p>

With the whirlwind of activity she faced – the administrative work of tendering her resignation, handing her work over to her colleagues, packing her belongings, and managing the other logistics of her relocation home – Anne had hardly any time to think about Frederick at all for the first week after she got the news. It wasn't until Frederick called her over the weekend that she realized how delinquent she'd become in her communications to him, wrapped up as she was in this unfamiliar new world.

"Hey, stranger. What's up? I haven't gotten any email from you all week, baby."

"Nothing. I'm just busy at work, I guess." Somehow, Anne couldn't bring herself to talk about it over the phone like that, even if it _was_ Frederick she was talking to. Everything still seemed so unreal to her. Up until then, she had never actually uttered the words "my grandma has cancer"; if she didn't say it out loud, she could still make herself believe that everything could go away, but if she said the words, it would become more real than ever. With her boss and colleagues, she'd used vague terms like "my grandma is ill", or "my grandma's health isn't so good anymore", but with Frederick it was different. She had to either tell him all, or tell him nothing.

"Everything OK? You sound kind of down, if I may say so."

"Yeah," Anne wished there was a playbook for life, especially life after cancer. Something, or somebody, to tell her how to navigate all the uncharted territory she was facing, like how to tell her absent fiancé that her entire life plan and priorities had changed literally overnight. But there wasn't, and so Anne was left with only her instinct. At this time, her instinct was to choose flight, rather than fight. "I'm just tired, I guess. There's this urgent project at work, and I've been pulling all-nighters the whole week to get it done. I'm sorry about being so tied up. Talk to you more next weekend? I guess I'll have more sanity time after this whole project is finished." She was making it up as she went along, but at least she could buy some time to think.

"OK then, I won't take up your time. Take care of yourself, yeah?"

To tell, or not to tell? When to tell? The questions haunted Anne like a shadow, clinging to her day and night. Writing about it in an email was the first option Anne eliminated - by now, she knew just how tough military pilot training could be, and springing this type of news on Frederick after a long day of training and study would be tantamount to planting a bomb in his inbox. That left the phone, and face-to-face communications. Anne tried to visualize his reaction if she were to show up at base to tell him – which was out of the question anyway because she'd have too many things to do when she got home to afford the time for such travel. Just imagining his shock was enough for Anne to throw out the entire idea of telling him now. In the middle of pilot training, he didn't need this kind of problem to distract him; especially when there was nothing concrete he could do to help her as long as he was still stuck there on base. She'd tell him when they were next planning to get together, at the end of summer after he completed his training. It would probably be easier to tell him then, too, when she had a better idea what lay ahead for her. _For us_, Anne hastily amended in her mind.

_Us_. Ever since the cancer diagnosis, the word "us" in Anne's vocabulary had become synonymous with her and Grandma; or perhaps if she wanted to generously expand the meaning, it could refer to the Elliot family at large. Her priority now was to bring the Elliots to band together against the dreaded disease, like gathering a football team in a huddle before they faced an unknown opponent. In this jigsaw, Anne just couldn't see where Frederick would fit. It was an unsolvable puzzle that constantly played in her head, but since she had to focus on the immediate action items to be done, she used all her effort to keep pushing it to the back of her mind every time it surfaced.

* * *

><p>The day she had to tell Lorin, Anne still couldn't find the wherewithal to string the words "Grandma" and "cancer" into the same sentence. Mutely, she handed Lorin the printed medical report. The clothes, books, and other personal items piled up in their living room, waiting to be placed into packing boxes, stood as silent witnesses to Anne's impending departure.<p>

"I've booked my air ticket to Detroit already, and I'll be flying off in a week. The stuff I'm bringing with me will be just whatever I'll need on an immediate basis. As for the rest of my things, it'd be great if you could help me to arrange for shipping, and for my car to be transported back as well. Just tell me how much it costs, and I'll pay you back pronto. Please?

"And one more thing. Please. Don't. Tell. Fred."

"Of course not! That's for you to tell him – in fact, I can't imagine for the life of me why you haven't told him already."

"How could I? What can he do, even if I told him? He can't come, that's for sure. I can't ask him to abandon his UPT. And if he knew, it'd drive him crazy thinking about it, on top of all the studying and other stuff he has to do already. It wouldn't be fair to him. As far as this is concerned, I've made up my mind – I won't tell him until after UPT is done. That way, he can focus on his training with complete peace of mind."

"Anne, do you really think Fred will have more peace of mind if you wait till summer to tell him? Just imagine – it's the biggest thing in your life right now, and he finds out you went on for more than half a year without telling him. If you were in his shoes, would you be happy with that? Fred has stood by you for four years now. He'd want to stand by you when you're going through the biggest challenge of your life."

"That's exactly it. If I told him, he'd want to stand by me, but I'm not sure that would be good for him, or for us. You know how my whole family feels about Fred, Grandma included. If Fred shows up in Detroit, it won't do anybody at home any good. It'd kill Grandma. And what would it do to Fred? Or for that matter, to Fred's plans to become a fighter pilot? He's already so close to getting there, and I can't ask him to throw it all away for me. It's not a good idea. Really."

"You're treating Fred like a baby. Come on, he's a grown man – and he has to be one heck of a hero to handle all the crap of military life. He can make his own decisions. Tell him – he can handle it."

"No, and I mean _no_. I can't solve this problem, and I don't have time to solve this problem. I just need more time to think."

"Well, if you wish. But if you ask _me_, I think you're making the biggest mistake of your life."

* * *

><p>Battling the two words "Palliative Care" took up all of Anne's time and energy once she touched down in Detroit. She made her rounds of hospitals - not just limiting herself to hospitals within Michigan, but also making the rounds of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the Mayo Clinic, and MD Anderson Cancer Center, to get second, third, fourth, fifth opinions. What she was after was a treatment plan that didn't have the word "palliative" in it; someplace which would be willing to give treatment that could keep the cancer somewhat at bay. No matter how many people told Anne that the realistic goal would be to control rather than to cure the cancer, and that palliative therapy aimed to do just that, somehow Anne felt better if they just didn't use the word "palliative" altogether.<p>

Meanwhile, Anne made sure to keep up with her schedule of emails and phone calls with Frederick. Luckily for her, he always called her cell phone, so she didn't have to explain a change of phone number to him. Somewhere along the way, she fell into a pattern of fielding his questions about her life with vague answers, and encouraging him as far as possible to continue jabbering on about life on base so that she didn't have to talk too much. Like an automaton, she went through the motions time after time, until one time she found herself nodding like a china doll, not even realizing that Frederick couldn't see her and couldn't hear her on the other side of the line.

"Anne? Are you listening?"

Anne returned with a jolt to the conversation and tried to pay attention. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to Frederick; rather, she was too caught up in her own world, the cancer world which she refused to share with him, to really engage in what he was saying. Their college days and aviation dreams seemed like a childhood fantasy long past; while in the present, Anne found it hard to fathom that she was still only 22 years old. To her, 22 years old felt too young to have to deal with problems as big as this.

Anne's current world consisted entirely of tumor markers, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, side effects, and a whole slew of drugs and dosages to remember. For the most part, The Elliots vs. Cancer was a battle fought by an army of two, though Anne also shamelessly capitalized on Walter's name to gain access to top specialists when she needed it. Eventually, they settled on MD Anderson; it seemed strangely ironic that she was physically nearer to Frederick than she'd been in months, yet she couldn't be farther away from him in spirit.

And she had to figure out what to do with the Pontiac, too. Like all the other issues pertaining to Frederick, she found someplace safe to stash it away, waiting for her to have the time and energy to think about it again.


	13. Chapter 13: Track 2

**Chapter 13 – Track 2**

_July 2001, Grosse Pointe, Michigan_

Six months later, Anne still didn't have any answers about where Frederick fit into her new life. A regimen of radiotherapy and chemotherapy at MD Anderson had succeeded in bringing down Grandma's tumor markers, and they'd decided to continue whatever maintenance therapy that might be needed at home. It suited Grandma to be near the family, and it suited Anne because she could start thinking about getting a job again. She got Walter to hire a housekeeper, Rosa, to help with the day-to-day caregiving, so that she could return to full-time work; persuading him wasn't that difficult when having more hired help also boosted the Elliot pride. And working was the one thing Anne dug her heels in about, as far as her family was concerned. It was all that was left of her hopes and dreams from college.

Anne was lucky that Northwest Airlines' hub was in Detroit; she could get an aviation-related job and continue living with Grandma, even if it wasn't potentially as exciting as what she could do in Boeing. At her level, it didn't make that much difference; if she really wanted to get involved in the heart of research work at Boeing, she'd eventually have to get a graduate degree and clock in many more years of experience, and none of that seemed likely anyway if she married Frederick, assuming he stayed in the Air Force.

All the practical tasks that needed to be done left Anne with very little time to think, but at night, after Grandma went to bed and she had completed everything for the day, sometimes she'd write down everything she wanted to tell Frederick but couldn't say. She'd imagine she was writing to him, and then staple it into her journal or send it to Lorin instead.

_Watching tumor markers is like watching the tide – it goes up and down, and all the books and blogs I read tell me it'll become like a riptide in the end, taking on a life of its own with no way to stop it. But now that the tide is ebbing low and lower, I can believe how things can go on this way. After all, there may be many cases I read where someone lives for three, or six, or nine months, but there are also a fair number of people who live two years, five years, even ten years. The medical report said six months, but now it's been six months already and Grandma is still with us, walking, eating, and going out. Chemo has been kind to her, I guess. So what's there to say it can't go on like this for years?_

_The thing is, no matter how many years it is, it's still never enough once you know for sure it'll end someday. When I'm waiting in the hospital, sometimes the only thing I can think about is when I can go back to enjoying the wider world outside. But at the same time, I don't want time to pass. I want the time to last forever, so Grandma can be with us forever. When I just can't take it anymore, sometimes it helps to just read, or daydream, so I can be somewhere else. It's so boring when time stands still, but if I do anything at all, the day will pass so quickly, and then there's one day less left. I don't know how long more I can carry on like this._

As she wrote, Anne felt the enormity of the Hobson's choice she faced squarely on her shoulders. She didn't want time to pass, and didn't want things to change. Yet if she was to stay with Frederick, surely something would have to change – either he'd have to leave the Air Force, or she wouldn't be able to stay with her family and Grandma. The third possibility was too unthinkable for her at this point; the best case would be to reverse the illness, but since the illness couldn't be reversed, the status quo was the best outcome, the only outcome she could possibly hope for. It was a choice she wished she didn't have to make; in fact, it was a choice she wished nobody else would ever have to make either. But in the end, the Hobson's choice was no choice at all; when facing something as final as death, there was never a way that anything else could possibly win out.

In Anne's imagination, she and Frederick would go their separate ways amicably. He'd understand that everything was for the best, for both of them – he could continue to live a pilot's life without anything else to tie him down, and she wouldn't be stuck in this limbo where she wished Grandma could carry on forever, while at the same time keeping her hopes hinged on a future that didn't include Grandma in the picture. He'd wish her well, and she'd wish him well, and then they'd both move on with their respective lives but remain as friends. She didn't talk to anybody, not even Lorin, about her plan; and as long as nobody gave her a reality check, she was able to keep churning the scenario in her mind, letting it get more real every time she imagined it.

As her farewell present to Frederick, Anne bought the single of "Learning to Fly"; it was the song that had started everything, so it seemed like an appropriate gesture to end things with the same song, as a memento of their time together. The single came packaged together as two songs: "Learning to Fly", and "One Slip". Anne didn't think much of the connotations at the time, though; in her mind, she knew she had no choice but to split with Frederick, and she had fully convinced herself that Frederick would understand that she always had his best interests at heart.

* * *

><p><em>August 2001, Detroit, Michigan<em>

Frederick couldn't wait for the suspense to be over, so he could settle that funny feeling that was starting to well up in the pit of his stomach. Over the past months, he'd sensed that something wasn't right with Anne – she'd been saying less and less in their emails and phone calls, and whatever she said was so vague that he hardly knew what she was really doing with her life anymore. A small part of him worried that Anne was getting more and more distant from him, but his confident, sanguine self took over and told him he was worrying too much; that everything would be all right once they got together and formalized their engagement. After all, Anne was keeping their appointment for the weekend, wasn't she?

He fingered the ring he was keeping in his pocket, the one he'd quickly popped into an airport jewelry shop to buy. It wasn't as fancy a ring as he could've gotten if he'd waited till he had more time to shop properly in downtown Detroit over the weekend with Anne, as they'd planned; but he was anxious to have a proper token to mark their formal engagement. At least it made things feel a little more certain to him, to counter the tiny doubts that had started creeping into his consciousness from time to time.

Their plan for that weekend was to stay in a hotel in Detroit, to make it easier for both of them to travel up to Grosse Pointe to meet Anne's family. Anne was supposed to check in first so that when he got there, she'd be waiting for him.

Indeed, Anne was there to meet him at the door; but instead of the happy reunion he'd pictured, she looked utterly miserable and dejected. Something definitely wasn't right, and there was no way he could possibly deny it to himself any longer.

"Anne, is something wrong?"

_Yes_, thought Anne as she held her chin up defiantly. She wished things could be different, that she could simply launch herself at Frederick and let him comfort her, and leave it to him to think of a solution to the entire problem. But that wasn't what she was here for.

"I need to tell you something." She felt like she had to speak faster and faster, before she lost the ability to get the words out. "I've moved home to Grosse Pointe, back with my family."

The shock of this revelation left Frederick totally dumbfounded. Hadn't Anne been working so hard, even prolonging their engagement, precisely because she wanted to be independent from her family? An Anne who'd go running back to her family, tail between legs, after trying out working life for barely a year was entirely alien to him; over the nearly five years he'd known her, he'd thought her to be made of sterner stuff than that.

"My grandma has cancer," Anne carried on explaining. She'd had to say that sentence many times in the past eight months, but this time was the hardest of all. "It's Stage 4. The diagnosis came in January, and I moved back home in February. We've seen her through chemo and radiation, and things are stable now, thankfully. But I'm going to carry on staying here to look after her. I've quit my job at Boeing to do just that.

"And I hope we can still be friends. Congrats again on graduating from UPT – I know you'll really enjoy life as a pilot, and I guess – I guess I wish you well." She pushed past him, across the threshold.

"_Friends_? What the hell do you mean, _friends_? I thought when we promised each other, on commencement day – we're more than just friends, and you know it. And now, you're saying you want to be just f***ing friends? I thought I meant more to you than that."

"You do. You always will." In all the scenarios Anne had played in her mind, which actually converged to just one scenario, really – an angry Frederick had never figured. But she was determined to ride through this situation with dignity. "I thought you would understand, though. For as long as I have to look after Grandma, my obligations are here, and there's no way I can possibly join you on base. I'm not going to ask you to quit the Air Force, and I don't think you want to quit the Air Force either. It'd be a total waste of all the effort you put into getting your wings. So, there's no way we could possibly be together, and the best I can do for you is to let you go ahead with your plans. And we'll always be friends."

"Didn't you think those promises you made mean something more than that? If you're willing to wait, I'm willing to wait too. It's as simple as that. Is what we have so flimsy to you that you won't even wait for us to be together?"

"Wait? For what?" Anne knew what he was going to say, but she'd still force it out of him anyway.

"Come _on_. Knock it off. You know there's nothing stopping us from being together after your grandma passes, and that's going to happen sooner or later anyway. You mean enough to me, that I don't mind waiting for us to be together. But what the hell do _I_ mean to you, if you can let go of me as easily as that? We might not even need to wait that long after all – she's what, 70 years old - and she's got cancer -"

"_No_!" Anne cut in. "That's not what I want at all, and that goes to show you have absolutely no idea what I really want. It's going to be many years, maybe forever, and _that's_ what I really want, OK? I want it to be _forever_. For your information, she's 80 years old, actually, but that doesn't mean you can slap a death sentence on her just like that. Frederick Wentworth, I'm sick and tired of hearing that from everybody, and I thought you, of all people, would know better than that. Anyway, this is for you. I wish you the best of luck." She thrust the gift-wrapped CD into his hand and marched off, walking out of his life, before he could even think of a reply.

Frederick had no idea how long he remained frozen there in the doorway until his brain started processing information again, and realization washed over him in waves.

_Anne had moved home; in fact, she'd moved home more than half a year ago and hadn't told him anything about it until now_. That had to be the realization which hurt the most of all – they were engaged, and by right that should mean he'd be the first one to know about anything that major in her life. Yet it turned out to be exactly the opposite; all this time, she'd been actively hiding it from him. That explained why she'd been getting more and more vague and evasive over the phone. He wondered when he'd been bumped so far down the food chain of her acquaintances, that after all this time he was probably the last person to know about her move back to Grosse Pointe.

_Anne's grandma had cancer, in fact, she was probably dying of cancer_. Frederick's concept of cancer was based on the time when his mom had been going through it, and he'd been too young then to really appreciate the daily dance of hope, fear and dread that every cancer caregiver goes through. He only knew the sense of doom and gloom hanging over the household, and his constantly pressing need to escape from it. So although it did register with him that Anne was most likely very distraught and miserable, what he didn't get was that the element of hope was very real to Anne at that point. Based on his family's experience, Stage 4 meant things would move on very fast; to him, Anne's denial seemed like a willful rejection of reality.

_All that said, Anne was probably feeling really, really lousy, and he'd said nothing at all to comfort her_. Frederick's mind switched to an alternate reality, one where Anne would confide all to him, and he'd hold and comfort her. Then they'd both band together to face the future, even if it wasn't the same future that they'd planned a year ago. If his mouth hadn't worked faster than his brain, maybe that reality may have played out, instead of the current stalemate they were in. But then for that to happen, he and Anne needed to be on the same side; and he wasn't so sure she was on the same side as him anymore.

* * *

><p>As Anne walked away from the door, she kept her back resolutely turned towards Frederick so he wouldn't see the rivulets of tears running down her face. Once she was out on the street, she walked on and on for what seemed like miles without looking back, determined that she'd get as far away as possible so Frederick wouldn't find her. Finally, she found a park bench and slumped onto it, and that was when she finally allowed herself to let go.<p>

She stayed there for two whole hours, immobilized by grief, mourning the loss of the entire life she'd worked so hard to build up: not just her relationship with Frederick, but everything else that came with it – her dreams, her independence, her freedom. Apart from the one fragment of passion she'd retained through her job with Northwest, nothing now remained of the Anne Elliot in MIT. The old Anne had believed she'd have plenty of opportunities to see the world and chase her dreams, but this new Anne would have to give up everything in order to devote herself to the family. But she couldn't complain; everything was a matter of fate and timing, and nobody could have predicted or prevented the diagnosis from happening so soon after her college graduation.

As the sky darkened, she slowly got up and squared her shoulders. It was getting late, and Grandma would be wondering where she was before long, if not already. Now that she had made her choice clear and fully resigned herself to it, the walk back to her car was measured and deliberate. She was no longer in flight, now that she had followed-through with her resolution to see through the obligations she'd put upon herself. From then on, she'd devote every fiber of her being to Grandma's needs, and nothing else.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, Frederick was pondering whether he should look for Anne, to try to talk to her and get through to her again; and to take back those hurtful things he'd said to her without thinking. But Anne had never told him her exact address in Grosse Pointe; it hadn't seemed necessary when she'd be going with him when they went to meet her family. If he wanted to seek her out, he'd have to look for Walter Elliot in the telephone book, or even go asking around from door to door. And if after all that effort, he ended up knocking on Walter's door only to be disparaged and insulted by Anne's family on their doorstep, Frederick didn't think he'd be able to take it. Calling Anne wouldn't help either, if she took the call in front of her family; he also couldn't stand the thought of them sniping and sniggering as they listened to her side of the conversation.<p>

He opened the gift, thinking he might be able to find some clues in whatever she'd given to him. It was the CD single of "Learning to Fly", and even though he knew the song almost by heart by now, he still played it hoping he could get some kind of inspiration on what to do next.

The CD had two tracks, and after the familiar song ended, there was another song, something which he'd never really noticed before. But as it played, the chorus stuck in his head:

_One slip, and down the hole we fall_

_It seems to take no time at all_

_A momentary lapse of reason_

_That binds a life to a life_

_A small regret, you won't forget_

_There'll be no sleep in here tonight_

_A momentary lapse of reason_. He'd been prepared to commit his entire life to her, and now, she'd reduced their entire time together – when they'd been practically the most important people in each other's lives, for God's sake – down to just that. So their relationship had been the Track 1 in the CD, and now they were in Track 2, where she was telling him it was all a big mistake. Frederick's imagination now readily supplied all the details that were missing in this puzzle: he could picture how her family must have worked on her, convincing her of all the disadvantages of their relationship. They'd probably told her how he'd never be able to provide for her well enough to meet the Elliot standards; that she could do much better for herself if she married someone with money and connections instead. Maybe there was even some such person in her life already. None of it was true, and in fact the inclusion of that song had been completely unintentional; but he couldn't possibly know that without talking to Anne, and he wasn't talking to her.

_Frederick Wentworth, you sorry sod_. That little voice used to play in his head when he was much younger, when his harried family members used to say, "Why can't you sit still and be quiet like Ed?" or "Why won't you just go and study, instead of rambling all over the streets and making us worry?" or "Can't you find something useful to do with your time?" all the time. From the day he'd decided to work towards becoming a fighter pilot, that voice had fallen silent and never surfaced again. Until now, that was.

_Frederick Wentworth, you sorry sod_, the voice said._ You thought you were such a smart dude, but now you've been played through and through, by a girl no less. You've been tying all your hopes to Anne Elliot all this time, and now you finally find out she's edited you out of her life long ago. When that happened, you didn't even know. That's how stupid you really are._

* * *

><p><em>Disclaimer: "One Slip" belongs to Pink Floyd.<em>


	14. Chapter 14: The Days the Music Died

**Chapter 14 – The Days the Music Died**

_September 2001_

The events of September 11, 2001 were the greatest tragedy of a lifetime for many in America and around the world. Though Anne appreciated how fortunate her family was to be relatively untouched by the disaster, it nonetheless felt as if the last bastion of her safe, secure childhood and youth had fallen. Nothing was safe or permanent anymore; the days when she used to believe she could explore the world without abandon were even farther away. And the chips hadn't all fallen yet, though Anne didn't quite know it at the time.

Before Grandma's illness, Anne would never have been included in the Elliots' meetings with their financial planner, Mr. Shepherd. But now that she attended these meetings as Grandma's escort, Anne was exposed to several hard truths about the state of the Elliot family's business and finances for the first time.

"Mr. Elliot, you know the Big Three automakers have been struggling for several years by now. All along, ELMSCO's business has been strongly dependent - too dependent, if I may say so - on big auto in Detroit, and ELMSCO hasn't turned a single profit since 1998. With the current downslide in auto demand, it's even less likely that ELMSCO's business can recover anytime soon; in fact, we'll be very lucky if the losses don't blow up even further.

"This is going to have a very strong impact on your personal investment portfolio, especially since a large portion of your finances are tied up in ELMSCO. It's highly unlikely that ELMSCO will be paying any dividends this year, and at the rate the Elliot family expenses are growing, you will fall into debt within the next 12 months if you don't start looking for new sources of income. Like employment income, for example." Mr. Shepherd looked directly at Elizabeth when he said that, but she met his pointed glance without flinching at all. "I also strongly suggest you start thinking of ways to keep your expenses in check."

"We do have some employment income," said Anne, gritting her teeth. "I work."

"Oh do you, doll? And who's the lucky soul you're working for, may I ask?" William Elliot eyed Anne up and down with a mocking look. _The Elliots are not ELMSCO, and our family finances are none of his business_, thought Anne, as she wondered why on earth her father favored their irritating cousin so much as to involve him in a matter as personal as this.

"Northwest Airlines." Anne gritted her teeth even more tightly.

"Well, isn't that cute. Flight attendants are getting younger and younger these days, aren't they? I could've sworn you were in seventh grade. Anyway, the airlines are getting it real bad after 9-11, and they'll probably be laying people off like crazy before the year is up. You better watch your job, darlin', before it flies away." William guffawed loudly at his supposed joke.

Nothing was new about the joke being on Anne, as always; but what was new about this time was that nobody laughed, not even Elizabeth. The situation facing the Elliot family was as grim as that.

* * *

><p>Under Grandma's instructions, Anne drew up a list of proposed cutbacks for the Elliot family.<p>

"I'm not long for this world," Grandma had said. "So I'll be counting on you to keep an eye on your father and sisters, next time when I'm not around. Just like your mother used to do. You're the only one in this family who's got your mother's sense."

_1. Sell the cars - all of them_, Anne wrote._ That means the Cadillac Eldorado, the Lincoln Town Car, and the Chrysler 300M, as well as Mary's PT Cruiser and Liz's BMW Z3. Replace with one fuel-sipping car, such as Honda Civic or the like. My VW Golf turbodiesel has good fuel economy, so I'll share it with the family. Two cars for five people ought to be enough._

"Don't be naive, child," Grandma said. "We are in the auto business, after all, and we do business with all Big Three automakers. What would GM, or Chrysler, or Ford, think if your father went to meet them in a Honda Civic? You can account the cost to the family business, but we do need one car from each of the Big Three makes to meet clients with, as the bare minimum."

_Since when did Father ever meet with clients_, thought Anne. But Grandma had spoken, and she was all-powerful. So that item had to be struck off the list.

_2. Do away with extraneous household staff. Rely on part-time maid service if necessary; and Rosa can manage both houses - Father's and Grandma's. It's possible, as long as housekeeping is kept to a minimum by everyone picking up after ourselves._

"That's not fair," said Elizabeth. "Why does Anne get to keep her housekeeper, when we have to give up our maids, our gardener and our chauffeur?"

"Right," Walter looked thoughtful. "Maybe Rosa could be the first to go, and Anne can stay at home to help instead. That'll improve our net financial position already."

"Rosa is Grandma's housekeeper, not mine." Of the many times Anne had to hold her ground against Walter, this was the first time she ever openly talked back to him. "So if you want to let her go, Father, you've got to talk to Grandma about that. And I'd like to think I have better long-term career prospects than a housekeeper."

In the end, Walter never spoke to Grandma about it, but that also meant they'd never let go of any of the other staff either.

_3. All members of the Elliot family are to wear all their clothes for at least two seasons. That will immediately slash our clothing expenditure by half._

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. "Maybe that'll be OK for _some_ people around here who have absolutely no sense of fashion whatsoever," she sneered. "But what will my friends think of me if they see me wearing last season's clothes?"

_If they're your real friends, they'll respect you for your good sense_, was the reply Anne would have loved to give. But in the Elliot household, such words would fall on deaf ears anyway, so she saved her breath.

* * *

><p>And so the Elliots were all back to square one. Nobody could agree to any of the budget cuts, even though it was clear they couldn't continue living in the Grosse Pointe house without cutting back on something, and so there had to be a Plan B.<p>

"Why don't you consider relocating?" Mr. Shepherd suggested. "If you move to a city apartment, you can enjoy a stylish urban lifestyle, without being saddled with the kind of expenses that come with maintaining a big house. Think of it as the modern, 'in' thing to do. And if you rent out the house, you'll be able to earn more income."

Elizabeth was the first to latch onto the idea. "Dad, why don't we look for some place with some decent shopping? Like New York, or maybe Chicago. Motor City is _so_ boring."

Anne raised an eyebrow at Grandma across the room. _That's not going to help at all_, she was trying to say silently. _You know they'll blow whatever's left of the family fortune at Saks Fifth Avenue or on Magnificent Mile._

Walter sighed. "There's something stately about living in a house. No apartment can ever be a match for that. We could rent a house - but definitely not anywhere in metro Detroit. What will the neighbors say if they saw us downsizing in our own backyard? It just won't do."

Mr. Shepherd cleared his throat. "I don't think moving into a house will – ahem - improve the financials by enough to make much of a difference. Maybe you could consider something else, though. How about getting a chic condo unit in Florida? It's _the_ place for the fashionable retiree set, and you'll have plenty of lifestyle options to keep yourselves entertained. And you can upkeep your home easily without the need for full-time staff, which will keep your costs manageable."

"Florida it is." Anything that allowed him to downgrade while still breathing the word "status" was the best option as far as Walter was concerned. So, it didn't take him that long to decide.

"Well, I'm staying here," said Grandma. "I'm too old to move across the country, and besides, I want to live out the rest of my days at my old home. And Anne and I will manage quite acceptably on Anne's pay. Won't we, Anne?"

"Sure we will." Given the situation, staying put was the most appealing option to Anne, because at least she could keep her current job.

"If you're staying, I'm staying too," piped up Mary. "I don't wanna leave when I've just started to make new friends in college. It was hard enough leaving all my friends from high school behind, and I don't wanna move away and have to do all that again."

That was how the last chip finally fell - Walter and Elizabeth set up their "chic" lifestyle in Florida, while Mary joined Anne and Grandma at Grandma's house, and the big house in Grosse Pointe was rented out. But this time, Anne wasn't entirely sorry about how things turned out; at least, it gave her some breathing space and an excuse to distance herself from her father's and Elizabeth's lives. In fact, it was the only way she could do so.

* * *

><p>"Anne, are you sure you won't consider working for ELMSCO instead? The company needs some Elliot blood in it to turn it around." Ever since their return from MD Anderson, Grandma had never stopped belaboring this issue to Anne.<p>

"ELMSCO already has enough Elliot blood in it already," was Anne's irritable reply. "Cousin William's there, isn't he?"

"Oh, pfoo. That man's good for nothing. Look at what state he landed the company in. But if you go in, maybe you can turn things around."

"Not me," Anne insisted firmly. "I'm an engineer, a technical person. I don't have a shred of business sense in me, and I certainly don't see myself leading a company. I know what I'm good at and what I'm not. And this is definitely not something I can do, or want to do."

"Well, you'll never know until you try. And it won't hurt to try, would it?"

The same exchange played over and over, many times in the years they ended up living together. But Anne stood firm that she knew what was best for her: she was above all, an engineer; and her calling was in aviation. That was one thing which wouldn't change, no matter what happened to the Elliot family or to ELMSCO.

* * *

><p>Try as he might, Frederick couldn't banish the thought of Anne Elliot from his mind. He worried about her, wondering how she was coping with her grandma's illness. He wondered if she might one day come to terms with the reality that her grandma's days were numbered, and if, when she came to that realization, she might regret pushing him away with such finality. There were so many questions on his mind with regards to Anne Elliot, and he thought he'd come up with a safe way to find out some of the answers, without putting all of his personal dignity on the line.<p>

It was 3:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time when Tom Harville woke to the sound of his ringing cell phone. "S***," he mumbled under his breath, fumbling for the button to silence it, when he saw that the caller was Frederick Wentworth. Clearly, Wentworth had forgotten all about the two-hour time difference between Texas and Palmdale, California, where Tom was working with Lockheed Martin. Even then, it had to be something really important for Wentworth to call him first thing in the morning, and Wentworth's mornings were at an unearthly hour for him even if they'd been in the same time zone. Usually, Wentworth's communications with him were pretty much limited to popping up on ICQ every now and then when both of them happened to be free and online at the same time; long phone conversations just weren't the style for either of them.

"Hey, bud. I need you to do me a favor." Harville sensed the urgency in Wentworth's voice.

"Dude, you got any f***ing idea what time it is over here? It's practically in the middle of the night. OK, so shoot. It better be important, or else."

"You know that gig you've got to celebrate Halloween in San Francisco? When you're there, help me find out from the others about how Anne's doing, OK?"

"You mean, you and Anne, aren't you -" Harville trailed off in shock, realizing the implications of what Wentworth was saying.

"That's right. Anne and I aren't together anymore. She's moved back in with her family." Wentworth's words were terse, but Harville could sense how much the whole matter was bothering him; at the very least, the timing and urgency of Wentworth's call was an indication of that. At that moment, Harville couldn't have felt sorrier for his friend. Any other guy who'd been dumped without warning like that could afford to indulge in drink and wallow in misery for a while before facing the world again; but Wentworth was tied to a punishing schedule, without even the time or privacy to confide properly to his best friend. Just how heartbroken Wentworth was about the breakup could be only a matter of speculation, when not functioning was absolutely not an option for him.

"How on earth – Did she give you any reason at all?"

"She's gone back to look after her grandma, who's got cancer. I just want to know if she's coping OK, is all. But don't let anyone know I was the one who asked you to find out."

"I don't know about that. Won't it be better if she knows it's coming from you? At least she'll know you still care. And maybe that'll change her mind."

"I wish. But she's made it clear as day, man. She doesn't want me in her life anymore, and as long as it's that way, I'm not going begging after her to let me in. I'm not going to even think about seeing her or talking to her, until I know for sure she wants me in her life again. Otherwise, I'm staying out of it. No way will I be crawling on my hands and knees."

To Harville, it didn't seem as if Wentworth was actually going to stop thinking about Anne anytime soon. He was also a little skeptical that whatever had happened between Anne and Wentworth was as irreparable as Wentworth was making it out to be. But still, he'd do what Wentworth needed of him; he'd find out whatever he could about Anne, and keep Wentworth's name out of it. Protecting whatever was left of Wentworth's dignity was the least he could do for him as a friend. And if there was indeed any hope of salvaging the situation, he'd find out soon enough anyway.

* * *

><p>"So I told you, it wasn't a mistake after all." The time difference actually worked in Anne's favor, since she could call Lorin after Grandma was asleep without it being too late on Lorin's side of the country. "With Father's company in the toilet, there really isn't any good I could possibly do to Fred by hanging on to him. He's better off free as he is now."<p>

"Shouldn't Fred be the one making that decision, instead of you making it for him? I told you he wouldn't like it that you kept the most important decision of your life away from him for more than six months. You're not giving him a fair chance. Maybe he'll still think you're important enough to him to give up everything else – you never know."

"I know the answer to that already. He didn't argue, didn't say a word when I told him the reason why we can't be together is because he can't quit the Air Force. How long have I been in Fred's life – like, five years? But he's been having that dream for way, way longer than that.

"You know, Fred came from an upper middle class home in the beginning. He actually had a regular family, just like you or anyone else, only that he lost it all. And so even before he started trying for the Air Force, he's had an all-consuming dream driving him all this time, which is to get back into that life he had to leave when his parents passed. So when others look at him, they'll see him as an equal instead of as some poor kid they need to pity. At the level he's at now, I'd say he's already gotten past his circumstances. He's achieved as much, in fact way more, than kids who've grown up with more opportunities and resources in hand. Give him a few more years, and he'll probably climb so fast others can't help but envy him, in fact.

"And I, where am I now? Fred's moving upward, and I'm rolling downhill faster than you can say 'Jack and Jill'. Fred worked so hard to get himself to a level where he's getting what he wanted most all along – which is respect. It's so much more of a plus that he's gotten there doing something he absolutely loves. After all that, I'm not going to take him down the toilet with me; that's for sure."

Anne repeated the same process with her other girlfriends, Jenna and Nat. These three close girlfriends were the only people she ever told about her decision to move back home and break off with Frederick, and she swore all of them to absolute secrecy, based on the premise that Frederick was not to be tied down and burdened with her problems.

So under Anne's instruction, when the five classmates (sans Frederick and Anne) came together in San Francisco that Halloween to catch up on each others' lives one year after graduation, none of the girls breathed a word to Harville or Benwick about Anne and her family situation. And as a result, neither Frederick nor Anne could possibly know just how much they actually still wanted each other in their lives.

* * *

><p>With the launch of the war in Afghanistan, it came as no surprise to Frederick when he finally was deployed to the Middle East. Since there was nobody to see him off, he made his farewells to Sophia, Edward, Harville and Benwick over the phone the night before he left, and then he was gone.<p>

"If you find out anything about Anne, let me know," he'd expressly instructed Harville and Benwick. Over the years, the classmates continued to plan regular reunions, though these grew fewer and farther between as some of them got married and started their own families. Still, if two or more of them happened to be in the same city, they'd find time to meet and continue to catch up. The gatherings continued, and Benwick and Harville continued to fish subtly for information about Anne, but to no avail. They never saw or heard anything about her again, because Anne avoided all the gatherings and even though the girls knew, they weren't telling.

When Frederick was promoted to Captain three years later, one of the first thoughts that ran through his mind was that Anne would be very proud of him; at least until he remembered that the Anne he was thinking of didn't exist anymore. He sharply reminded himself that from the day she stepped out of his life, Anne had changed into someone he didn't know or recognize anymore, and there was no use clinging on to a phantom. He'd move on, and he wouldn't look back.


	15. Chapter 15: Jetrosexual Reprise

**Chapter 15 – Jetrosexual Reprise**

_March 2009, Punta Gorda, Florida_

"Write a letter to yourself." That was an assignment Anne had gotten at summer camp the year she was fourteen. The letter was supposed to be about a dream that was important to her, and they'd post it to her one year later as a reminder of that dream. At the time, just a few lines had been enough to do the job.

_Dear Anne, everyone is telling you you're living in a sheltered bubble, so you must explore the world outside home. I believe you'll live to tell the tale, and to open this letter. Love, Anne Elliot_

Now that she'd seen Frederick at the Air Show, the first time she'd had any contact with him in almost eight years, Anne felt the overwhelming urge to pen down the emotions spilling out of her. And so that night, alone in her hotel room, she wrote a letter to herself.

_Dear Anne,_

_Today, I finally saw Frederick again. Who'd know it's been almost eight years by now? He looks exactly the same, if not even hotter than he used to be. Confidence is hot, you see, and he's got it in spades now. Not that he didn't have confidence and charisma last time when we were in college, but back then, he was still the wannabe who had yet to prove his worth to the world. You could still see the chinks where his insecurity showed from time to time. Like, for example, the careful sleight-of-hand he used to make sure everyone thought he was the coolest dude in the whole world. He'd never be caught dead studying in front of the guys in the frat house, or let anyone else know just how much sweat it cost him getting those A's in class, or his private pilot license, or his Air Force pilot slot. But now, it's all different – he's got no more reasons to be insecure because everybody looks up to him. For all those girls queuing for his signature today, he's got the stature of a Greek god, or a rock star. To them, he's Mr. Perfect, and if you didn't know him from Adam, there'd be no way to tell that he's been through so much difficulties when he was growing up. It's as if his past never existed at all; he could've been one of those perfect kids who led a charmed life from A to Z, and I'll bet that's what all those girls who were there today think he was. Well, I know better, but maybe since I'm not around to rat on his secret, he can finally erase the disadvantages of his past for good._

_I wonder if Frederick's married, or going out with anybody now? I'm sure with all the female attention he's getting, it won't be difficult for him to move on, and he probably has. And if he's got somebody else, I don't even have the right to mind anymore; I gave that up way back in 2001 when I walked away from him. But I can't help wondering if whoever he's with is making him happier than when I was with him; if she's able to look after him and support him in the way I did, in the way I still want to. Well, that's going to continue to be a mystery, because there's no way I'm finding out. Lorin, Jen and Nat are keeping me posted of his comings and goings in the Air Force, at least as much as they can dig out of Tom or James when they meet, but every time, it's all about his work. It'd be presumptuous of me to start digging into his personal life, and even more so if I show up and re-introduce myself to him after so many years. He has a right to build a new life for himself, and even if I flattered myself to think he'd still care about me, even just a tiny smidgen, I can't just barge in like that. When you set somebody free, you've got to commit your whole heart and soul to it, otherwise you might as well not do it at all. _

_OK, I promise I won't do anything about it. But just allow me to have a few minutes to indulge myself, just to remember the past. To remember how Frederick used to slink around, easy as a cat. I always used to envy him, how gracefully he moves around when I'm such a total klutz. How I came to think his cheeky smile was the cutest thing in the whole world; I can't imagine that once upon a time, I actually found him irritating at first. I guess it's because before I knew better, I always thought he never took me seriously. Until I realized he actually took me more seriously than most of the people in my life, in fact. At least, he respected my opinions and treated me as an equal, which is more than I could say for Father, Liz, or even Mary or Grandma. He'd do anything to help me achieve my dreams, just as I'd do anything to help him achieve his. When he was around, I always felt like I mattered; whereas at home, I'm always on the sidelines, trying to stay out of the way. With Frederick, I was never in the way; in fact, he made it so clear he couldn't do without me, and in a good way, not the way Mary does. He gives and takes, but Mary takes way more than she gives – I guess that's the difference. To remember how both of us had so much fun playing sports or just enjoying the outdoors. I haven't played any sport in such a long time, ever since I moved back home, and I miss the high I get from running, from swimming, or from wading across a stream in just my Tevas and feeling the cool water on my toes. Those were the times when I really felt alive, and happy to be so._

_Back in those times, we were both young and hungry, and I think that's what really brought us both together. We might've come from very different sides of the tracks just before we went into college, but at the end, we were both fighting the same kind of battle in a lot of ways. Both of us were battling the odds against society's expectations - that Frederick would end up amounting to nothing, and that I'd end up amounting to nothing outside my family. And to varying extents, I'd like to think both of us have succeeded. He's done so to a much greater extent than me, of course; but I still have my job at Northwest, I've been promoted twice, and I'm still financially independent of Father, so I suppose my MIT education isn't completely wasted after all. _

_Frederick never had any use for anyone in my family, and most of the time, it was actually because of me; he'd said he could never respect anyone who treated me like dirt the way they did. In fact, they still do, so just slap me right now for being so ungrateful as to say it out loud. He's right, in his own way, but I suppose that's just one more reason to convince myself that the what-would-have-been if we'd gotten married might not be so rosy after all. Grandma once told me that when you marry someone, you marry their family. And I'd never wish my family onto Frederick. I wouldn't wish them onto anyone, except maybe myself; I was born with them, so I guess that's my karma._

_Well, since it's my karma, I hope I'm doing a good enough job of looking after my family. I turned out to be right about Grandma, after all, in a way. She lived three years and two months after the diagnosis, much longer than what the doctors ever predicted. For those of us in the know, there's always hope even in Stage 4. Granted, it's not the same kind of hope as those folks in Stage 1 or 2 may have; we'd be kidding ourselves if we didn't know that complete cure is almost if not certainly unattainable. But the hope we have is to control the disease, and we know it's not impossible to think with the long run in mind. Now things are even more different, with more therapies to string together so there'll always be more options to try if something doesn't work. Grandma wasn't lucky enough to be able to benefit from the new targeted therapies like Tarceva or Erbitux, but we've been fortunate in so many other ways, like how we've been largely successful in keeping her side effects in check. And when the final weeks came around, I learned that there's still hope in the face of death; you can still hope for a peaceful passing, with lots of love and the minimum of suffering. I'm glad to have been able to see Grandma through that, even if I was scared like crazy all the way. I owe Grandma a lot for bringing us up – even if we didn't always see eye to eye, I know she always had our best welfare in mind, and for that I'm eternally grateful. And so seeing her through the journey of life, that's the least I can do to reciprocate and I've done it._

_These years, they've been hard on Mary in a different way, too. She was just as scared as me about Grandma's cancer diagnosis, and maybe even more since she's always lived in fear that we'd die and abandon her, just like the way she thinks Mom did. I wish I had more time to comfort her back then, but I was just in over my head with my work and looking after Grandma and running the house as best as I could with Rosa. The Musgroves were a godsend to step in the way they did, so Mary could get away from the house from time to time. She couldn't take it, facing all the trappings of illness and knowing just how serious things were. It was harder for her, I guess, being still so young and all. Who's to know I wouldn't have reacted the same way if it had happened when I was her age? Anyway, she needed to be a normal teenager some of the time, going for parties, movies and swing dancing; and Charles was able to come in to give her a little bit of that life. I guess it's no surprise they ended up together; after all, he was her best friend during those days, and the Musgroves' was where she could take refuge whenever she wanted to get away from the grim, gloomy world of cancer. I'd like to think Grandma would have approved of them getting married, even though she didn't live to see the actual wedding. But by the time she went, I think she probably knew already that it'd happen sooner or later. I'd like to believe she went with the consolation that Mary would be well taken care of._

_I'm worried about Father and Liz, actually. I haven't been to see Mr. Shepherd since Grandma stopped going for the meetings; it's not my place to be there when Father's the head of the household unless he specifically invites me. But I can see how they're living it up in Florida, and I wonder how much they can possibly save. At least, the Big Three have rebounded somewhat and the auto industry is doing pretty OK for now, so I hope things can hang in there for awhile. But if I were Father or Liz, I wouldn't spend the way they do. We might not be all the way down the toilet, but we're not totally in the clear either._

_Where do I see myself one year from now? This is the part where in summer camp, they tell us to put down something on our bucket list we hope to do, so when we open the letter the next year, we can feel happy we've done it. But I'm turning 31 next month, and I don't have a bucket list anymore. In fact, I know if I open this letter again one year from now, I'll have moved backwards rather than forwards. For one, I'll be living in Charles and Mary's house like an au pair. I already said no to that once, when Charlie was born. I figured Mary was already getting more help than most other young moms, because she and Charles took on Rosa after Grandma passed, and Mrs. Musgrove is right next door. But now that she's expecting a second child, it isn't fair to expect Mrs. Musgrove to look after both her kids, especially when the twins are still teenagers and need someone to keep an eye on them; and with Rosa retiring, there'll be nobody to do the dreaded middle-of-the-night bathroom runs and such. True, I'm working and Mary isn't, and so I'll be hard pressed to catch a few winks of sleep here and there, but realistically, knowing Mary, she still won't lift a finger and someone needs to tag-team with Charles; he's working, too. _

_Should I hope I've moved on, relationship-wise? Setting Frederick free means I've already committed myself to a future without him, so there's no point crying over spilt milk. But all these years, I haven't had the energy to invest myself in another relationship, either. Family has been taking up a lot of my time and whatever energy I'm not putting into my job. I'll play it by ear, I guess. Like what I've been doing all this time._

_So what messages shall I leave for myself for next year? Hang in there. Find little joys in life, like listening to those old '80s and '90s songs and remembering the days when you were young. Continue praying for Frederick, because he's safely back in the US and he's doing well, so somewhere your prayers have been answered. And remember to take care of yourself and do the right thing by others. True, sometimes it really sucks that nobody appreciates you, but you've got to remember, you can't just demand attention the way Liz and Mary do. You've got to earn it, and if you make the first move by treating others right first, then someday in the long run, they'll treat you right in return. I've got to tell myself all these things, because nobody will give me these little encouragements if I don't do it myself._

_Yours,_

_Anne Elliot_

_P.S. I think I've got the whole situation in a nutshell, it all goes back to my favorite song in the end. Fred's out there flying, his dream come true like the song said. What about me? Just to quote the song, I am, "just an earth-bound misfit, I". _

**THE END**


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